


Fever Dreams

by JSevick



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Because it's me, Drabble Collection, Episode Related, F/M, Fluff, Future Fic, Most chapters are teen-rated fluff, SOME CHAPTERS RATED 'E', and i've caught it, arrow season 4, because the other half of olicity is fever, but here we go, but probably not, i don't know what this is going to be, might include more involved/plot-ish stuff later?, my first ever attempt at smut, ridiculous fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:34:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 45
Words: 51,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4599999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JSevick/pseuds/JSevick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of moments in the lives of Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak as they find out what life together can be. </p><p>Or, alternatively, whatever silly fluff I can’t stop thinking about. </p><p>41: Future fluff: Oliver realizes Felicity's a bit shy about something...<br/>42: Felicity and Oliver attend a suburban Christmas party.<br/>43: Oliver gives Felicity a BB-8 mini-robot - and it becomes so much more.<br/>44: Random bits of Ivy Town fluff.<br/>45: Ivy Town smut. Prompt: "Why are you wet?" [E]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In His Hands

**Author's Note:**

> The Arrow fandom gave me such an AMAZING welcome for my first drabble, my first fanfic in years, that I just couldn’t stay away… and this is what you get. I have no defense. This ridiculous, slightly-OOC (?) idea occurred to me and I went with it. I wrote it quickly without a beta because I have no shame (and I don’t have a beta…?), so I sincerely apologize for any errors or mistakes with canon. Please… forgive me.
> 
> [UPDATE 8-22-15: I rearranged the chapters because this fit as a first chapter better. So these notes technically go with what is now Chapter 2, "Secret Stash" - still figuring out this fanfiction thing... :)]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity gets sick, Oliver gets grumpy, and no one is surprised.

The sounds of grunts and stifled curses and sweat-slicked bodies smacking against the mat puncture the silence of the lair, over the steady background hum of servers. With a gasped breath, Diggle falls heavily onto the ground, nearly tossed through the air by Oliver’s sweeping leg and shoving arms. He stays down, chest heaving, staring up in slight bewilderment at Oliver’s furious grimace.

“What’s his problem?” Laurel says from where she leans against the railing with one hip, arms crossed over her chest.

“Come on, _get up!”_ Oliver almost growls.

Thea sighs, sitting on the stairs up to the computer platform. “Felicity’s sick.”

“I am not sick,” Felicity’s voice cuts through the lair, along with her shuffling footsteps, today in flats instead of her usual heels. The low, scratchy tone of her words, the deep circles beneath her eyes, and the pallor of her cheeks say differently. When she reaches Thea, who just raises one eyebrow, Felicity closes her eyes in resignation. “Okay, I’m sick, but I’m not _dying_.”

Oliver’s head snaps around towards her as soon as they hear her voice, and now he stalks towards her with pounding steps and a fierce expression on his face.

“ _What are you doing here_?” he says, looming over her.

She is not in the mood for dealing with him. “I had an idea for tracking Smith.”

“You’re supposed to be home, _resting_.”

“It’s sitting in front of a computer, Oliver. Not running a marathon.” Which it looks like he’s been doing, given the rivulets of sweat slipping down through the labyrinth of his abs and scars. If Felicity’s head didn’t feel stuffed with churning clouds, her limbs heavy and weak, her throat scraped and sore, she would spend more time appreciating it. As it was, she just gives him a pleading stare through her glasses, to leave the fight for another day, and lifts a thermos out of her oversized bag. “See, I even brought soup.”

The veins in his arms pulse with his effort not to carry her back to bed, but he just releases a breath through flared nostrils and steps back. But not too far—his hand presses into the small of her back as he guides her up the stairs to the platform.

His giant frame hovers behind her as she walks over to her station, as though she might collapse at any moment. She would say something, if that wasn’t a very distinct possibility. When she sinks into her chair, feeling a bright white flash of lightheadedness swoop over her, she just closes her eyes and focuses on moving her hands to the keyboard.

“I thought if I modified one of my viruses to track his company cell phone through their e-mail server-”

“You don’t need to explain,” Oliver says, cutting off her gravelly voice. “I trust you.”

Most likely, he just wants her to stop straining her throat, but she can’t help the dart of pride and happiness that breaks through the haze of her illness. His hand curves over her shoulder, and she rests her cheek against his knuckles for a moment, before turning to get started.

It takes her longer than it would have normally, given that she has to look away from the lines of code and flashing colors every so often to ease the headache threatening to burst from her skull, but finally Smith is rendered into a blinking dot on a map of Star City, and her heroes are suiting up to place that dot firmly in Iron Heights.

“Go home, Felicity.” Oliver’s voice is as soft as his fingertips trailing along her damp hairline.

“I’ve got to make sure the tracking stays on target,” she says, though it is a struggle to keep her head up. “If you guys are out there and something goes wrong… I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway.” Knowing they were out there… that _he_ was out there.

She can feel Oliver’s tension rolling through his broad shoulders and the jerk of his square jaw, but he just sighs and cups a hand around the back of her neck. His thumb sweeps over her clammy skin, as he presses a kiss to the top of her head. “We’ll be back quickly. Stay on the comms.”

As he walks off to change into his green leathers, Diggle walks by on the level below and leans through the railings. “Get better fast, Felicity. My ass can’t take another beating like that.”  

“Neither can mine,” she mutters, and even she doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean, but Digg just smiles and shakes his head as he walks away. She barks out half a cough, trying to stifle it until the others—particularly Oliver—leaves. And when he gets back, she won’t fight him. In fact, maybe she can monitor this mission while laying her head on her arms…

Overall, the mission is simple. Smith isn’t a mastermind, just generic enough to be hard to catch. The only hiccup is that he used some of his embezzled money to hire a goon squad—but no one good enough to match her heroes.

“Felicity… _Felicity!_ ” Oliver shouts into her comm.

She’s muted hers so they wouldn’t all hear her hacking up a lung and gasping for breath, and it’s halfway through a coughing fit that he’s calling her name. But she’s sure in Oliver’s mind, she’s either fallen down dead or been kidnapped, so she does her best to collect herself and gulp down water and choke out a garbled, “Yes?”

“Do you have the evidence ready for Lance?”

“Already sent,” she says, and she sounds like she’s been smoking for fifty years, and Oliver actually _growls_. The smacking sound that follows makes her think one of the goons got more than he bargained for on this particular night.

“Then we’re done here,” he says, and then he’s telling the others to get Smith ready to leave behind for the approaching sirens, and she’s too busy shaking through a chill to pay much attention.

“Okay, I’m signing off,” she says, deciding to almost whisper rather than try and force out the words through her cheese-grated throat. “I’m not dead, or kidnapped.” This is her life; it’s something she has to clarify every time she’s not in direct sight of her vigilante boyfriend. And she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She hangs up before answering Oliver’s demand for her exact status.

And then, eyeing the cot shoved into the corner of the lair, brought over from the old lair for all-nighters and emergencies, she wonders if anyone will see her if she crawls.

Felicity wakes to a cold, wet cloth on her forehead, and hands tugging the blanket higher up around her neck. She blinks open bleary eyes into the dimmed light of the lair, and though her glasses are on the floor beside the metal leg of the cot, she would recognize that large fuzzy shape anywhere.

“Hey,” he says softly. As her eyes adjust to being open, she can tell he’s crouching beside the cot, still in his green leathers.

“Hey,” she croaks, and he gets that little crease between his eyebrows.

He reaches up, taking hold of the washcloth and dragging it gently down her face, pushing back sweaty wisps of hair, sweeping it around the back of her neck. She sighs with pleasure, closing her eyes.

“You got him, right?” she asks.

“We did. Because of you.”

“No,” she says, trying to plan a more articulate argument, but nothing happens. Instead, she coughs, turning into the pillow with a mental note to wash the sheets of the cot as soon as possible.

Oliver’s hand curls into a fist around the washcloth, wringing out droplets of cool water over the blanket. “I hate this. Not being able to do anything for you.”

“Maybe we could find a shrink ray and you could go in and punch the virus,” she says, weary but smiling, and he presses a kiss against her forehead.

“You’re joking, but I’m seriously considering it,” he says. “Otherwise, I have to keep punching Digg just to have something to do.”

“Don’t…” she says in a groggy whimper.

“Do you want to go home?” he asks.

She knows he’d carry her, but with her precarious stomach and aching skull, she feels like her body has melted into the cot and has no intention of letting her leave. “I don’t really want to move.”

“Okay,” he says, and he shifts his body to sit down on the floor next to the cot.

“What are you…?”

He’s removed his gloves and gauntlets, because the hand that finds hers beneath the blanket and cradles her small but powerful fingers in his warm palm is bare.

“Maybe my hands are good for more than just punching,” he says, half of his lips quirked up in something between a joke and self-deprecation, and his thumb slides over the back of her hand.

She squeezes her fingers against his, and doesn’t have the willpower to tell him not to waste time sitting with her. Because he leans against the cot and wraps his other arm around the top of the pillow to readjust the cloth over her forehead, and he’s _so_ much more than just a weapon, and sometimes love is letting yourself be loved.

So she falls back asleep to the smell of leather, and Oliver’s fingers combing through her hair, and her hand carefully held in his, where his calluses feel like life instead of pain. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is plot? What is hacking? What is the least amount of thought I can put into a villain’s name? What is the sappiest amount of sap I can write before we’re ALL sick? 
> 
> I figured if I was going to title the collection “Fever Dreams,” even though I did it just because it tickles me so much that it could be an alternate ship name, I should probably include a ‘sick’ drabble. And it probably won’t be the last one, because fluffy hurt/comfort is my jam… for better or worse. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!!


	2. Secret Stash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver finds Felicity's secret stash...

Coming back to Starling City means coming back to all of their stuff, and Felicity has mixed feelings about that.

On the one hand, she spent a lot of time cultivating her collection of flirty dresses and high heels from resale shops and black Friday sales, and then from not-so-resale shops as Vice President of Queen Consolidated—most of which did not fit in her hastily packed suitcases meant for beaches and mountain hikes and long, heated days of not leaving whatever cabin they washed up in. And as much as she enjoys their accumulated collection of souvenir t-shirts (mostly bought by Oliver when laundromats were scarce, and worn by her as she bustled around the kitchen in the morning hunting down coffee while his possessive gaze stayed fixed on her bare legs beneath the hem of _his_ shirt), she’s looking forward to having a broader selection again.

On the other hand, there was something so simple and peaceful about just the two of them, just the handful of possessions in their duffel bags, just the strangers around them in cities ripe with ocean air or pine-scented breezes. No expectations, no mission, no armed psychopaths… unless she counts the armed robbery at the gas station that Oliver stopped, which she does because it was the spark of purpose and pride in his eyes that told her this wasn’t going to last forever.

Mostly, she’s happy. She fell in love with Oliver the Arrow, after all, and even after all the complications that it brought between them, it’s also the only reason there _is_ a “them.”

So she comes home ready to return to her friends and her life… and her apartment. The college student interning in Starling City for the summer—at Queen Consolidated, even—who subletted her apartment is gone, with all of her things left intact. But even with the unexpected pulse of _home_ that hits her when she and Oliver stop at her apartment once inside the city, she doesn’t want to leave him. They haven’t really talked about living arrangements, and she knows he wants to see Thea and will probably settle in at the loft, at least for a while. He hasn’t _exactly_ invited her…

But she’s not sure she can sleep without him beside her, and if the way he reaches out to wrap her in his arms as soon as they’ve exhausted themselves each night means anything, she’s pretty sure he feels the same.

They stand slightly awkwardly, silently, just inside her door as she takes in the room. She should tell him to go check on Thea, right? And then she should take a shower, put in a load of long overdue laundry, make sure the college student didn’t break anything or leave something rotting in her fridge… But she doesn’t move from his side.

Finally, Oliver huffs a quiet breath. “Felicity…” He sounds slightly unsure. “I know we just got home, but I… Will you come to the loft? To stay, I mean. I know Thea’s there, and maybe you want…”

“Oliver,” she says, feeling the grin on her face already, reaching out to tug him closer by the fabric of his t-shirt. When he immediately steps up against her, she’s still awed that she can move this giant of a man with little more than a smile. “I just want you. At the loft. Not that I don’t want you here, or anywhere really, I think I proved that this summer.” She sighs as she cuts herself off. “We’re doomed if we’re both going to start rambling.”

His arms come up to wrap around her shoulders, as he pulls her in against him and presses a kiss to her temple. “I love you,” he says, and it’s all he needs to say.

They might spend a few minutes in her doorway making out, and she might not care if her neighbor passes by and does a double take.

“I need to pack a few things,” she says, breathlessly, lips still moving over the stubble along his jaw, and he makes a little half-growling hmm sound as she pulls away that bounces through her from head to toes and settles somewhere in the middle. His arms slip away and he lets her go, but the look in his eyes says it isn’t over.

That it won’t ever be over.

Her stomach is still twisting pleasantly as she makes her way back to her bedroom, knowing if he follows her that she won’t get much packing done. But he must truly be anxious to see the others, to see Thea, because he stays in her living room and starts to look around. She realizes this is his first time seeing her place, really, since when he came to pick her up for their trip they were both eager to start their new adventure.

It is just as she is carefully choosing dresses to stuff into the garment bags, and trying to decide which shoes are the most versatile to last until she can send movers—wait, is she actually moving in with him all the way? Did she just leap twenty steps ahead by herself?—that she realizes he is out there looking around her place.

Looking at her _things_. Possibly some very specific things.

By the time she gets out there, hastily trying to think of a reason to redirect his attention, her worst fears have been confirmed. He’s standing in front of her bookcase, paging through one of the paperbacks from her bottom shelf with his eyebrows raised.

“That was just research,” she says, the first thing to pop into her head, and it’s the worst possible thing to say. Unable to meet his gaze as it turns to her, she tries desperately to cover. “For, um, an algorithm. This hacker was, um, using a book cipher from that—from all of those. You remember the, um… romance novel hacker, don’t you?” Her voice has gotten small and high-pitched, and her cheeks pulse with waves of heat.

When she peeks at him over the top of her glasses, so the perfection of his face is obscured by her blurred vision, she can still make out the bright white of his grin.

“I’m not sure I remember that one,” he says, almost giddy. For Oliver, at least. “But it seems, whoever it was, they had a pattern.” He’s still holding the book, but it’s hanging at his side, and she follows his glance to the row of novels along the bottom shelf. How many had he looked at?

And had he noticed they were all about… billionaires?

From the single raised eyebrow, the expectant smirk, it seems he has. Felicity wants to bury her face in her hands and invent a time machine.

“It’s not what you think,” she says, quickly. “It’s not like I have some gold-digging fetish or anything—I told you, I don’t care about money. Your money. Any money. Well, I mean, some money— _my_ money, that I want to _earn_ , myself.” She clenches her eyes shut as though she can just will herself to disappear. “I mean, I don’t have like a _thing_ for that; I wasn’t, like, _aiming_ for you or anything. I got all of those after we met, anyway.”

His grin widens, and she hears herself with that _stupid_ three-second delay that plagues her life, and finds herself wishing the college student had burned down her apartment just so she wouldn’t have to live through the rest of this moment.

Just to get through it, she finds a spark of anger and clings to it, no matter how ridiculous. “You don’t get to judge how I spend my days off, Oliver; how I’ve spent the last couple years while you were sleeping with practically every woman you met—and I don’t even know what kind of gross porn collection you probably have. If I want to spend my Sunday mornings just _not thinking_ for a few hours, you can’t-”

“Fe-li-ci-ty,” he interrupts, voice soft, suddenly much closer than she’d realized since she’d been staring fixedly at the rug. His fingertips brush across her cheek, coaxing her to look up, and she does with a resigned sigh. His smile has softened, his eyes warm. “I don’t care—I know you don’t care about my money. If you did, you probably wouldn’t still be with me.”

“I don’t,” she says quietly, and she’s preparing herself to launch into the long, _long_ list of all the reasons she loves him for _him_ —but he’s kissing her, and it’s her favorite way to stop her rambling, preoccupying her lips with his.

This time, when he pulls away, it’s her that makes a little whimper of disappointment.

“I was more curious,” he says, tone low and rough, “if there were any particular scenes you might want to… reenact.”

The book falls to the floor, their feet tangle together as they stumble back towards her bedroom, and Felicity grabs her spikiest pair of heels from the floor now that they’re in reach.

Thea and the loft have waited this long, a little longer won’t hurt. And Felicity has a feeling this might be something her boyfriend’s sister wouldn’t want to hear.


	3. Bright Lights, Big City

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because Oliver thinks Felicity is a babbling cupcake when she's sober...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partially inspired by MachaSWicket's drabble about giggly!drunk!Felicity (http://machawicket.tumblr.com/post/127078920412/firstjumperonfire-okcupidescapades-one-time), which was adorable and… I couldn’t resist. 
> 
> P.S. I don’t really know how to write drunk people… so yeah. Here’s to trying new things!

“You are so gone,” Thea says with a smirk.

Oliver frowns at her, because he really hasn’t had much to drink… but then he realizes she means his longing stares across the room where Felicity stands at the bar, getting water.

And yeah, she’s right.

He knows the bartenders at this new club they’re checking out are paid to watch for shady characters, and that Felicity can take care of herself while just across the room getting a cup of water…

But there’s a man talking to her. She’s still smiling, and that’s the only reason he hasn’t gone over to her.

Yet.

Thea rolls her eyes at him, which he only sees out of his peripheral vision, and turns to say something to Laurel standing at the table beside her. Probably about him, because they both snort and laugh. He’s starting to feel outnumbered, without Roy, with Digg home with his wife and kid. And he’s surprised to find he doesn’t care.

As though she can feel his eyes on her, Felicity turns to him then, smiling and waving as she directs the man’s attention towards him. Her blonde hair is down around her shoulders, over the pink dress that matches her bright lipstick and nails, her glasses exchanged for contacts. He can’t help smiling back at her, but he feels it sharpen at the edges, teeth clenching, when he turns it on the man.

Oliver doesn’t hear what the man says to Felicity then, but her smile drops and he can see her mouthing the words, “Excuse me?” And he can hear her exact tone in the voice of his memories, and he’s crossing the room towards her.

But before he reaches them, before he does something stupid and caveman-like that will have all of the women surrounding him giving him lectures, Felicity turns and walks right into him, cold water sloshing from the edge of her clear plastic cup over his arm as he catches her against him. When she reaches out to clutch his bicep, she bursts into laughter.

“You are so _hard_ ,” she says, giggling, as they cling to each other. “Not—I mean, hard. Like… hard. I’m saying different words, right?”

He grins, and kisses her, and maybe gets a little more into it than appropriate for the middle of the room, perhaps because the man at the bar is watching them with a frown… But Felicity has thoroughly distracted him, with soft lips and lightly panting breaths and a taste like a tequila sunrise. Without looking back, he pulls her shoulders under his arm and leads her to the table where Thea and Laurel are giving him raised eyebrows.

“Where’d the water go?” Felicity asks, staring at her mostly empty cup. Oliver can feel the former contents soaking through his rolled up shirt sleeves and down his back from when she threw her arm around his neck.

“I’ll get you another one,” he says, taking the cup from her hand.

She opens her mouth to argue, or say thank you, the less likely option, when her phone starts buzzing loudly enough to be heard in her clutch purse on the table. “Oh!” she says, pulling it out and reading the display. “It’s the thing! With the guy, at the place!”

“Is it sad that I know exactly what she’s talking about?” Laurel says dryly.

Thea gently takes the phone out of Felicity’s excitedly waving hand, and then grows serious. “Oliver, he’s on the move. We’ve gotta go now.”

There’s a slightly tense, awkward moment as they look at Felicity, who’s clinging to Oliver’s shoulder and swaying lightly with the music. Or, she would be, if she were anywhere near on-beat.

“The stuff’s already in the car, Ollie,” Laurel says. “We don’t have time to take her back to Verdant. Want to call a cab?”

“No,” he says, maybe a bit more harshly than necessary, and he sighs to soften the blow. “We’ll take her with and leave her in the car.”

“Like a dog?” Thea sounds more amused than offended.

“What dog? Where?” Felicity asks, smiling brightly, and he mutters something to distract her as they hurry out of the club to the black SUV parked down the block.

He doesn’t love this plan, leaving her sprawled across the backseat with her tablet and the doors locked, far enough from the warehouse so she’s nowhere near the action, but he doesn’t have much of a choice. They didn’t think her virus would eat through the guy’s phone encryption that fast, and this may be their only chance to grab him.

They’ve all got comms in, including her, even though Laurel glares at him when they leave the SUV behind to Felicity whispering, “Yeah, I’ll be quiet. Like a mouse. Except mouses aren’t even really quiet, you know? They squeak. I won’t squeak. Do I squeak?”

“Great idea, Oliver,” Thea says through the comms, cutting her off, but they’re already starting recon and he’d rather hear Felicity’s babbling voice than silence.

After a few moments she does quiet down, distracted by something on the tablet—occasionally, she mutters something that sounds like “bandwidth” or “registry error,” and it sounds so much like the way she talks in her sleep that he smiles beneath the hood. Maybe she is sleeping; that’s fine, he tells himself. She’s not passed out, she doesn’t have alcohol poisoning, she’s _fine_ …

“Oh, no… don’t…” Felicity says suddenly in a plaintive whimper, and he freezes. When she gives a small shriek, he’s already running.

The SUV stands alone on the dim street, just as he left it, while Thea asks if she’s okay. With his heart pounding in his ears, he tears open the door to the backseat just as Felicity shrieks again and stabs out a leg that he catches in his hand.

“Oliver! What are you-”

“Are you okay?” he asks, voice deep and not from the modulator.

“A raccoon climbed on the car,” she says, sounding horrified. “He had a mask, too. Maybe he could join us?” Then she’s laughing, lit by the blue light from her tablet, and Oliver feels many things at once.

First, trying to stay focused on this goddamned mission, because he’s still not used to having _Thea_ on the other side of the comms, _fighting_ …

But there’s also relief, that she’s fine—this time, she’s really fine; and delight in her laughter, even—or maybe especially—when Thea and Laurel are giving them both grief over the comms; and a pleasant, if untimely, stab of arousal, to match the spike of her heel digging into his gut and the slim ankle held in his gloved hand…

And that new feeling, of love and happiness without regret, that has suddenly become everything to him.

He really is so gone.

“Oliver, can you please wait to fool around with your hot mess of a girlfriend until _after_ we get this guy?” Thea asks, but it’s the twang of her bow that pulls him back into the moment.

“Felicity, I’ll be right back,” he says softly, lifting one finger over his lips as though she might understand mime better than words. To which he gets an exaggerated nod, and poorly stifled giggles, that don’t stop when he curls her leg back into the car and locks the doors tight. He reminds himself the windows are bulletproof glass, and it really will be just a minute, because he’s got the best motivation he’s ever had to save this city.

His hot mess of a girlfriend? Might just be this city’s greatest success.


	4. Talk To Me [E]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver knows communication is key...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter is rated "E." 
> 
> This is my first ever attempt at smut… I am so sorry. Look away. Save yourselves. 
> 
> I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing here, so if something is blatantly wrong or it’s horrible, I can only apologize and crawl back into the trash heap that is my home. 
> 
> …Here we go.

“Talk to me, Felicity,” he groans, slightly breathless, ragged at the edges. He lifts his forehead from her collarbone to stare into her face, tense with concentration as his heavy body continues to writhe in a sloppy, desperate rhythm above her.

She’s biting her lip, eyes scrunched shut and eyebrows furrowed, little whimpering pants trapped in her throat—and he has to look away again, because she’s _not there yet_ and he feels the gathering release at the base of his spine and he’s barely holding it back. With every slide of her sweat-slick breasts against his chest, and flutter of her fingertips around his shoulders, and helpless jerk of her hips when he hits a certain spot, he nearly loses his ruthless grip on the sensations of his body. One hand is twisted into the sheets beneath her shoulder, and the other skims down her thigh, her knee hooked over his elbow.

“I… can’t,” she whimpers. “I’m _trying_.”

“Talk to me,” he says again, running his lips along her jaw as he slows down a bit, because otherwise it’s over. “What do you need, baby?”

“I don’t… know.” She twists her head to the side, damp blonde curls thrown over the pillow. “Oliver…”

He groans into her hair, because when she says his name in that needy, breathy tone… He hears that voice in his dreams.

Feeling like he’s fighting a countdown in his blood, Oliver reaches between them as his mind cycles through every trick he knows. Should he change positions? Go back to using his mouth for a while? Try something more adventurous? No, that requires a conversation first, and he won’t last that long.

Should he just give in and make it up to her with round two?

But his rough, calloused fingers circling her swollen flesh has her shifting against him with new urgency, her bottom lip freed from her teeth as her jaw drops open.

“Is that helping?” he says, kissing his way along her hairline to her temple, his voice guttural.

“M-maybe…” The word trails off in a shaky moan, and her nails are digging into his biceps. “I don’t know, Oliver, I— _oh_ —I just can’t stop… ah, thinking. My mind is just, you kno— _oooh, yes, almost there_ —and I can’t…”

“Felicity,” he mutters with a grunt into the pillow behind her head, speeding up helplessly as he chases more, _more_ , just a little more and maybe she... Sometimes when she starts rambling again she’s about to come—and sometimes, when he’s off his game, she talks herself out of it.

“I just… I should have been able to… it was all my fault…” She’s lost it again, her groan full of frustration as she wiggles clumsily against his fingers and his hips. “I’m not… going to… Just let go, Oliver.”

With a growl, he presses his forehead against hers, staring right into her eyes. They’re slightly glassy with pleasure, and he’s close enough that she doesn’t need her glasses to see him clearly, so when she tips her chin forward to kiss him she doesn’t miss. Before he’s really formulated any plan, she’s taken _his_ lip gently between her teeth, and her legs suddenly curl up to dig her bare heels into his ass, and her stubby turquoise fingernails are burrowing grooves into the muscles of his back as she pulls his whole body into hers.

“Come for me, Oliver,” she breathes against his lips, but he’s already gone.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he gasps. The pleasure sparking through him is tinged with guilt, as he empties into her and loses a few hazy moments just existing in his own skin.

He comes out of that blissful blankness of mind with Felicity pressing soft kisses along the stubble of his jaw, her arms slung around his neck, his thick torso smashing hers into the foam topper on their mattress. As he pulls away, in every way, she gives her small adorable pout and then shifts so they roll to the side still entwined.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles.

She shakes her head, then slides her nose against his before kissing the tip. “Don’t give me that macho crap,” she says, still slightly out of breath, her breasts lifting towards him as he trails the backs of his knuckles around their curves, his other arm coiled around her back. “Despite what you like to think, you do not have complete control over my body.”

“Unacceptable,” he says, pulling her in for a kiss. “And it wasn’t your fault,” he adds.

“I sent you guys down the wrong hallway and you were nearly killed.”

“We wouldn’t have even had a chance without you. So stop thinking about it.” His tone lowers on the last words, body shifting against hers, and she’s raising one eyebrow.

“You’re not giving up, are you?” She sighs as though exasperated, but she’s smiling, and she’s already twisting their bodies until she rises above him in the dark. He drags his hands from her hips and up her back, pulling her down until that sassy mouth is within reach of his.

“ _Never_.”

XXXXX

“Talk to me, Felicity!” Oliver is shouting through the comms, running to hop onto his motorcycle and chase the car that’s a speeding, blinking light on her screen.

But her cheeks are blazing with heat and she can barely focus, lost in memories that are flooding her with warmth.

Thea, who was left behind nursing a bruised cheekbone, holds out her ice pack. “Need this? And you do _not_ need to tell me why.”

Felicity curls her shoulders up around her chin and doesn’t look at her.

But when Oliver grunts with effort and a little frustration as he speeds the motorcycle through the streets, the sound right in her ear as though his lips are just there…

She takes the ice pack without a word.


	5. Suburban Living

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A drabble inspired by life in the suburbs. 
> 
> Spoilers for the Season 4 trailer (though I'm guessing if you're reading this, you won't mind). :)

“How was it?” Oliver calls out, when he hears the click of her heels across the tile in the foyer.

She says nothing until she flops down onto the couch beside him, and he knows it’s bad.

“They hate me,” Felicity says with a groan, letting her head fall back against the top of the couch. He reaches out towards her, because he can’t _not_ touch her when she’s near him. Sometimes, he still can’t believe this is real.

“That’s impossible.”

She glares at him behind her glasses, though it’s more adorable than threatening. “It is absolutely possible, and we’re moving.”

“What happened?” he asks softly, sympathetically, even though he’s smiling. In his entire life, he’s never smiled as much as he has the last few months.

Closing her eyes, she sighs. “I spoke. I breathed. I existed—that’s what happened.”

“Felicity,” he says gently, the backs of his fingers brushing across her cheek. “Come here.”

In one fluid motion she falls across his lap, head pillowed on his thigh, turned towards the TV he’s muted. “Are you watching this?” she asks, looking at the baseball field on the screen.

“It’s just highlights,” he says. He runs his fingers through her hair, combing it back from her face, and she snuggles deeper into place, nestling her cheek against the denim. “Now, come on, tell me.”

“I thought it was going okay, you know—most of them are older but they were really nice. And then Sharon went to the bathroom and they started talking about how they think she’s in foreclosure, and I mean, I obviously knew it was gossip, I was going to be good…”

She sighs again, and he feels a small pang, because he knows how this story ends.

“And then they were asking how long we were here for, and I said we were month-to-month, and that we were getting such a good deal on the rent because the house was in foreclosure—of course, I had to immediately clarify that there’s nothing wrong with being in foreclosure, that in this market everyone is, not that anyone _here_ is, and they all just went quiet. I should be used to awkward by now, but it was… Then Denise looks right at me and says, ‘So how long was your lease again, Felicity?’”

The small, sad tone in her voice tells him there are old scars here being reopened, and he strokes his thumb across her cheek as though he can smooth them away. But he knows better than anyone that’s not how scars work.

He also reminds himself that he can’t threaten suburban housewives with arrows to get them to stop being mean to his girlfriend.

"It's okay,” he says, because he just wants that tone out of her voice. “It could happen to anyone.”

“But it _doesn’t_ , Oliver, it happens to me—over and over again.” She releases a breath, and then turns on her back so she’s looking up at him with a wry smile. “They all think you’re hot, obviously. I mean, they weren’t being weird about it or anything, I could just tell because they were asking questions about you, and then of course I made it awkward by talking about how big you are.”

“What?” he asks with a grin he can’t help.

“See, no matter how you say it, it sounds wrong—I meant, you know, your height and shoulders and arms—but Christine was already choking on her wine, and I tried to clarify that’s not what I meant, not that you _aren’t_ , and-”

He can’t fight the short breath of laughter, because he knows that’s exactly what she said, and he can only imagine what else she might shock these women with.

She glares at him again, but she’s fighting a smile too. “I need you there to stop me. Or, like, an automatic shock collar. Maybe I’ll invent one for conversational awkwardness—of course, I’d probably be fried within a day.”

Oliver curls his hand around her neck, running his thumb along her jaw. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

“They’re our new neighbors, Oliver, and if we… I mean, however long we’re here, I want…” She gives up, frustrated, thumping her head down on his thigh. “And we didn’t even play Bunco, so I did all that research for nothing.”

He’s stopped from further attempts to comfort her by her phone dinging with a text, and he lifts his arm so she can sit up to reach for it. When she makes a small sound as she reads, his mind flashes with the worst possibilities—another attack on Starling (no, _Star_ , he reminds himself) City, something with her mother, something with _Thea_ …

But then she’s turning back to him, and she’s grinning, and his heart stutters for an entirely different reason.

“It’s Amy—she wants to do lunch next week,” she says, looking back at the text as though it might have changed. “She says I’m hilarious.”

“Because you are,” he says.

She’s still smiling to herself, and he wonders if old wounds really can be healed. He supposes he knows a lot about that as well.

Then she sets down her phone on the coffee table, and turns back to him. "So how was your night?"

“Good,” he says, looking down at the beer bottle clenched in his other hand, resting on the arm of the couch.

“What is it?” she asks softly, combing her fingers through his hair above his ear, because she could always see right through him.

So he sighs and says, somewhat wryly (because is he really _this_ gone?), “I missed you.”

They had spent almost every moment together for months, other than the occasional errands or jogs, and it was… amazing. During his wildest years, in all of his wildest dreams, he never would have thought that sitting on the couch and watching TV with someone would be the highlight of his day—that it would be something he would look _forward_ to.

She crawls onto his lap, rising over him to capture his lips in a kiss, and he can taste the red wine and dark chocolate on her tongue.

Pulling back slightly, she murmurs, “I missed you, too. And I have a feeling your night is about to get a lot better.”

He slides his arm around her waist, anchoring this miracle to him, and says the cheesy thing because he loves this woman so damn much.

“It did the second you got home.” 


	6. Desperate Housewives

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More suburban life drabbles because I can't help myself. :)

“These are beautiful, Felicity,” Mary says, flipping through the photos, sharing looks with Ellen who is standing beside her.

Felicity smiles, secretly proud that someone else thinks the photos are as perfect as she does. It’s why she went to the trouble of actually printing them out, at a corner store and everything, and bought frames on clearance at the home goods store. She’d been making small talk by complaining about the deluxe color printer she’d left behind at Palmer Tech (risking the tangent that would come with that name), when all the women were suddenly clamoring to see the photos.

Surprised, Felicity had fetched them from her purse; she’d always thought other people’s vacation photos were the bane of backyard barbecues like this.

But all the neighborhood women are gathered around her now, looking at the photos and occasionally raising their eyebrows or handing them to each other, some smiling wistfully.

“Could you e-mail me a copy of this one?” Karen asks, flipping around the photo of them on the Amalfi Coast.

It’s one of Felicity’s favorites, with Oliver so relaxed and wrapped around her; she can remember the scent of ocean air and fragrant flowers, the sights of rocky cliffs above and the tiny colorful streets, the taste of limoncello and the shouts of Italian on the wind. She remembers the little pensione with the ancient iron bed frame that squeaked, and her overwhelming embarassment when the energetic old woman who ran the place kept encouraging the “beautiful young lovers” to “enjoy themselves” in her limited English.

“You want a copy of my vacation photo?” Felicity asks, confused.

“Oh, Bill and I are thinking of going to Positano on our trip next year,” Karen says nonchalantly, while some of the other woman exchange glances.

“I’ve got some great ones of the town and the architecture, the church they have there—I can send you those,” Felicity offers, but Karen shakes her head and flips a hand.

“No, um, just this one is fine.” She takes another look at it, and then continuing on in that breezy tone, adds, “Did you take any photos at the beach?”

Several of the other women look over at Felicity.

“Not really, no—Oliver doesn’t like to swim.” She doesn’t add that he sat with her on the beach some days, and she has a couple casual photos of that—but he kept on his t-shirt; she made sure he knew not to be ashamed of his scars, but that didn’t mean he wanted the attention they unavoidably brought.

She doesn’t say any of that, because she thinks she gets it now.

“Oh, that’s a shame,” Karen says. The air of disappointment among the women is tangible, and Felicity isn’t sure how to feel. Not jealous, really, not the way Oliver would be if the men were talking about her this way; maybe she should feel a bit more angry that they’re objectifying Oliver, but then… she knows how inevitable that is.

The little spark of pride and triumph shouldn’t feel as good as it does, she tells herself, because the way society fosters competition between women for the attention of men is completely sexist—and his playboy looks are really the _last_ reason she fell for Oliver…

Still, though, her smile may be a little smug when she gathers the photos back into her hands.

“All I can say, honey, is enjoy it while it lasts,” Karen says, voice wry and knowing and no longer under any pretense, and Felicity follows the jerk of her chin towards her husband Bill across the yard. He looks perfectly nice, if a little balding and pot-bellied.

But then Felicity’s gaze shifts automatically towards Oliver, who’s smiling at something the guys are saying over by the grill, his arm curled with his hand clenched around a beer bottle, the muscles of his broad shoulders defined beneath his slightly-too-tight shirt.

“Karen, I’m sorry, but Bill _never_ looked like that,” Ellen says flatly.

Karen sighs. “Don’t I know it.”

As though summoned by their attention, Oliver looks over at the circle of women, but his eyes quickly find Felicity. His whole face softens, smile easing into something warm and intimate, before he’s drawn back into the conversation with the guys. Probably about sports, she thinks, and she’s glad because it’s one interest she’s struggling to share with him.

“Oh, you lucky girl,” Ellen says with a sigh, as several of the other women quietly ask Karen to forward that e-mail along to them when she gets it.

She really _is_ lucky, Felicity thinks, though not for any of the reasons these women can see.

And the husbands of the neighborhood never quite figure out why the backyard barbecue was so… inspiring.

But they plan another one next week.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come find me on Tumblr (jsevick) for more freaking out about Season 4 domestic bliss--and more inevitable minifics about these cupcakes! :D


	7. Word of Mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The guy hitting on Felicity gets a little more than he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea what this is–-seriously. Just ignore. I’m going to crawl back into my trash heap now.
> 
> Another suburban life drabble–-someone stop me. After this, I’m sure someone will. And I bet you can guess where I had a huge debate about in-character word choice, and I’m still sure this whole thing is just wrong. Heh…
> 
> I almost left this as a Tumblr-exclusive because it's just too... whatever this is, but some people over there seemed to enjoy it, so I thought I'd share it with my AO3 peeps.
> 
> I'm sorry.

“Can I help you with anything?”

The first thing Felicity notices as she turns to the man suddenly beside her, standing in front of the endless varieties of pillows on the high-reaching shelves, is the overly accommodating tone and somewhat slimy smile. She doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there’s something about his eager eyes combing over her and his close proximity that sets her on edge.

The second thing she notices is that he clearly does not work here.

“Oh, no, I’m just looking, thank you,” she says politely. But even when she turns back to look at the shelves, fidgeting with her glasses, he stays right beside her.

“Looking for a new pillow? The right one can change your life.” He grins, as though he’s said something funny. “My name’s Brian.”

“Um, hi,” she says, and she knows she does not want to give her name back. “And, uh, thanks for the tip—about the pillow, you know. Very true. This one hotel we stayed in had these _amazing_ pillows and I’m trying to find one like it, although to be fair I probably slept so well that night because we spent, like, _hours_ —no, stop yourself.” She mutters the last part to herself, but whether Brian is even really listening to her is uncertain.

“You’re cute,” he says, and he inches closer, looking triumphant for some reason.

Felicity wonders if he didn’t even hear the very obvious ‘we’ in that ramble—maybe she should have just gone on to describe the mind-blowing sex with Oliver that night. Well, more than just night; all day, really, and she needs to stop remembering it because the flush coming to her cheeks could definitely be misinterpreted.

She hasn’t been hit on that often in her life, but she obviously knows that’s what this is. And for once, she actually does have a boyfriend to use as a shield in letting him down easy.

“Ah, thanks, that’s very, um, flattering,” she says uncertainly. “But, the thing is, I’m with someone—I mean, here, like he’s here somewhere, but I’m also, you know, _with_ him, so…”

“Oh, right, sure,” he says, and it’s somewhere caught between nonchalant, disbelieving, and a slight undertone of bitterness that has her stomach fluttering with a light twinge of discomfort.

“Well, I better go find him,” she says, turning to walk away. She had left Oliver in the kitchen section—or more accurately, had been sent away after her complete lack of cooking skills had translated into complete ignorance about the difference between a frying pan and a wok. Oliver had been talking with a salesman about the best grill for their little concrete patio, and she’d decided to get a headstart on bedding.

“Come on, don’t _leave_ ,” Brian says, frustrated, and his hand snags her elbow. “I’m just trying to be nice and talk to you. You can’t even give me two minutes?”

“I don’t see how two minutes is going to accomplish anything, since, you know, I have a _boyfriend_ —and he’s really big,” she says, and then decides to rub it in, because he still hasn’t let go of her arm. “In _every_ way. And I meant to say that.”

“You don’t have to lie,” he says, low and cutting, his fingers digging into her skin until it hurts.

She yanks her arm out of his grasp, making him stumble forward a step. With the lashing kick to the inside of his knee, like Oliver taught her when they playfully sparred in their new backyard, Brian crumples to the ground with a curse that sounds a lot like, “Bitch.”

“I wasn’t _lying_ ,” she spits down at him, her voice getting louder. “I mean, even if I was, I don’t owe you anything—but do I look like I couldn’t have a boyfriend? Because I do. I have a giant boyfriend with a huge dick and he’s _real_. And we have sex, like, all the time.”

It’s the sound of the expelled breath, half torn between laughter and confusion, that makes her close her eyes and turn around slowly.

Oliver’s eyebrows are raised, his lips quirked at the corner, because of _course_ he would find her shouting about his dick in the middle of Bed, Bath, and Beyond. An older woman rolling a cart past them in the center aisle has stopped, just staring. Maybe she’d like some verification of these claims.

Then his gaze sees Brian rising slowly from the crouch, and Oliver frowns, stepping closer to her. “You okay here?” he asks her, voice soft and deep. But his face is fixed in full Arrow glare, directed at Brian who has gone pale.

“Yeah,” she says, snagging his hand at his side to turn and lead him down the aisle, away from Brian’s shamed, fearful face. “Let’s go find some durable sheets to have all that amazing sex on.” Oliver lets her tug him back towards their cart sitting in the crowded main aisle, leaving behind his glare at Brian to shake his head with a familiar amusement.

When they pass the old woman who’s still gaping at them, Felicity lifts her chin even through the heat on her cheeks and says, “Yes, I meant to say that out loud. All the sex. Right here, right now.”

And that’s how they were banned from the Bed, Bath, and Beyond on Rosemont Street. 


	8. Neighborhood Watch [E]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity and Oliver have an audience.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter is rated "E." 
> 
> If I wasn't sure about posting the last chapter, this one... I have no excuse. 
> 
> Standard smut disclaimer applies: I have no idea what I’m doing here. 
> 
> This is another suburban living drabble–otherwise known as the continued adventures of Olicity being banned/kicked out of places for talking about/having sex.

Later, Felicity will think that the glowing shimmer of morning sunlight cascading over them, lighting Oliver’s blue eyes and catching in the glistening layer of sweat across his skin, should have made her realize far before she did.

But of course she’s too preoccupied in him, in the feeling of his hips surging beneath her own, his entire body really, the muscles of his stomach clenching as she rides him. It’s one of her favorite positions, him sprawled out beneath her. She slides her fingertips over the gorgeous lines of his torso, tracing the scars and tattoos like she’s finger-painting with his sweat, until she flattens her palms against his shoulders to grind down against him, wringing breathless moans from both of them.

Wanting to slow it down and stretch it out a bit, sensing the tension gathering in his spine, she sits back and smiles playfully. “Easy there, big guy—I’m not done with you,” she says, as he expels a chuckling breath. He’s so relaxed like this, letting her take control, content to run his rough hands over her hips and down her thighs, eyes unabashedly fixed on her breasts. Her tousled hair hangs down around her face, her glasses on the nightstand so he’s a bit fuzzy at the edges.

When his hands skim around her hips to grasp the curves of her ass, digging into the muscles she’s currently putting to excellent use, her head falls back as she bites her lip against a groan.  

It’s when she tilts her head forward again that she sees the teenage boy standing outside the window of their first floor master bedroom.

Holding up a cell phone and gawking at her.

With a shriek, Felicity lunges down to flatten herself against Oliver’s chest, folding herself in half.

“What is it?” he asks, arms hovering anxiously around her.

The way they’re stretched sideways across the bed means the top of his head faces the window—while she was entirely on display. She peeks up through her hair, her cheek sliding against the scrape of his stubble, to see the boy still standing there in their front lawn. Oliver’s body twitches uncertainly against her, still helplessly chasing his orgasm.

“Felicity,” he breathes into her ear, torn between concerned confusion and plaintive begging.

“We forgot to close the blinds last night,” she says, remembering the tipsy stumble into bed after the Grants’ party down the street. “I mean, this is private property, we shouldn’t _have_ to, right? Aren’t there, like, laws against this? Although I’m not calling the cops to report a kid watching us have sex—Lance would have a field day. And my mother… Oh God, she’d be _proud_.”

“There’s a kid out there?” he asks, voice still strained, but he was somehow able to pick that out of her rambling. He’s gotten much better at it.

She’s reaching towards the nightstand, towards her glasses and her tablet lying there, stretching across Oliver who’s grumbling confusedly against her breasts in his face. The rasp of his bearded jaw across her nipple sends a shudder straight to her core, where he’s still hard inside her.

“What… are you doing?” he grunts against her skin.

“I need my tablet,” she says, fingertips just brushing the corner of the table. She wants to crawl forward to reach it, but it would mean separating from him, and she’s not ready to do that yet.

“Why?”

“To hack his phone—he’s _filming_ us.” The boy must be only thirteen or fourteen, based on size and stature, and even in the blurriness of her poor vision she can tell his arm is lifted to hold the phone against the window.

“He’s _what_?” Oliver growls, wrapping an arm tightly around her waist to hold her against him as he sits up, twisting his shoulders to turn and glare back at the window. Felicity can’t help the startled whimper at the sudden movement, pulled abruptly away from her reach to hang over his arm.

Whatever the boy sees in the harsh lines of Oliver’s face, he takes off running.

“Oliver,” she whines slightly, because his arm is an iron cage around her ribs. “I need the tablet—while I can still ping his GPS based on proximity.”

But the way they’re sitting now, entwined in each other, has shifted the angle and she can’t help writhing against him a little. His arm still anchors her against him, his other hand skimming down her spine, his head angling forward to press hot, wet kisses against her throat.

“Oliver,” she says again, hands braced against his broad shoulders, pushing ineffectually.

“We’re not done,” he murmurs, voice gravelly as it spills over her collarbone.

“Fine—just flip me over and keep going while I do this.”

He huffs a breath as he pulls back, looking insulted, and she sighs and curls her arms around his neck.

“I meant, ‘oh, Oliver, you sex god, who cares if my boobs are all over the internet, you are just too big and manly and amazing at sex for me to think of anything else, ooh, baby.’”

His lips curve at the edges, his eyes filling with affectionate amusement, and his face grows smug when he thrusts up against her and she can’t fight the shaky gasp that proves her words weren’t entirely false.

“Okay,” she mutters against his lips, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back as she shifts above him, their stomachs gliding against each other. “I’ll canvas the neighborhood and scrub our mentions online later. Just… don’t stop doing that. _Ever_.”

The satisfied hum he makes, pulling his lips in between his teeth with a look of concentration as he lifts her so he can flip them both over onto her back… That quickly, she’s close, and it won’t be long.

Anyone looking in the window now would only see their tangled legs and Oliver’s perfect ass, and they (mostly) remember to shut the drapes from then on.

The boy’s mother finds him looking at the video and deletes it, but not before recognizing the naked (and unmarried) people happily cavorting in broad daylight, visible from the quiet suburban street.

And that’s why they are disinvited from the charity picnic at the church down the road.  


	9. Unusual

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The waitress at the diner has seen a lot of couples come and go...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing but fluff here, folks. :)

Kate hasn’t worked at the Cranberry Diner for long, but she’s already seen many couples come and go through her section. Some are old and sweet, some are old and cranky, some are cold and impatient, some are pushing the bounds of public decency. Mostly, they just make her miss her girlfriend, who’s away at a state school while she struggles to pay for community college and takes care of her mom.

But she doesn’t usually remember them.

The third time the ridiculously attractive couple sits in her section on a quiet Thursday morning, she recognizes that she might have her first regulars—other than Ralph, who sits at the counter and grumbles over his coffee about the post office and barely leaves a tip.

Tina begs her to hand over the table, mostly so she can ogle the guy up close, who she says in an excited whisper is, “ _Oliver Queen_ , oh my _God_ ,” like Kate is supposed to know who that is. He’s a man who isn’t a dead poet, so she doesn’t really care, and he looks too much like a bodybuilding frat boy—the girl, however, is incredibly adorable with her bouncy blonde ponytail and glasses, and reminds her of Nicki with a pang.

Regulars can become very good tippers, she thinks when she refuses to give up the table. Young couples generally aren’t, but if she’s remembering right, the last two times they’ve left decent tips and been easygoing and kind. She leaves Tina to the clump of women arguing about gluten in the corner.

As she approaches, she overhears them talking.

“You really want to order the same thing again?” the guy is saying, and even though his back’s to her, she can hear the smile in his voice despite the slightly exasperated words.

“I want a _usual_ , Oliver,” she says. “I’ve always wanted a ‘usual’ somewhere. I mean, I sort of had one when I visited my mom at work, but it was a Shirley Temple and gross old bar peanuts and a side of mortifying embarrassment, so not the same. I want to walk in and greet the chef through that little window and ask about the waitress’s kids by name. I want a _place_. Our place.”

Kate desperately wishes she could remember the girl’s order from last week, but it is all a blur of pancakes and omelettes and the occasional yogurt parfait with whole grain toast. She tells herself she’ll remember it from now on.

When she’s almost there, she sees their hands are tangled together in the middle of the table, his thumb sweeping across the back of her hand.

“And you want this to be your usual?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says with a firm nod of her head. “But can you order something with bacon this time? I’m already living in sin, might as well go the whole hog, right?” Her face splits in a cheeky smile, and Kate feels herself smiling as well.

But it’s nothing compared to the expression on the guy’s face when she’s finally standing next to their booth. His eyes are fixed on the girl, warm and intent, his smile helpless and awed even in its subtlety. Like she’s the perfect gift he hadn’t even known to ask for.

Kate finds herself considering the potential charms of muscular frat boys, something she never thought she’d do. And she promises herself she’ll Skype with Nicki later.

The girl looks right up at her, smiling, but the guy takes a moment to pull his eyes away from the embodied sunshine sitting across from him. He keeps hold of her hands throughout their order—“Chocolaty Goodness Waffles” for her (it’s actually named that on the menu, Kate keeps asking them to change it) and a cheddar bacon skillet for him, with an extra side of potatoes when the girl shouts it out at the last minute.

And as she walks away, while the girl starts babbling something about the maple syrup they have here and how she’d like to take some home and use it with him (“wait—not like that, I meant with your pancakes, which are amazing—not that I _wouldn’t_ like that, it just sounds sticky, although I guess if we showered right after-,” to which the guy starts shaking his head with a chuckle and the old couple at the booth behind them are spluttering over their ice waters), Kate knows this is one couple she will not forget.

Every Thursday morning for the rest of the summer, they sit at that booth. By the end, they know her mother’s name and Joe in the kitchen invents specials for them and they get extra sides of crispy potatoes on the house.

Then they’re gone.

XXXXX

Kate has been at the Cranberry Diner too long. What should have been a temporary job has morphed into practically a career, through the challenge to finish her degree and her mom’s medical bills and getting the apartment with Nicki when she finally moved back…

Every day sort of feels like an endless blur, now.

But the tiny blonde woman, petite everywhere but the rounded belly beneath the flowy knee-length sundress, sparks something in Kate’s memory. She even points to Kate’s same old section when she steps up to the hostess podium, before going to stand in the waiting area with one hand resting over her stomach and the other against the small of her back. Kate wants to tell the oblivious teenagers to get off the bench there, but she’s too busy in the thriving hum of the Sunday morning crowd.

It’s when the large man cuts right through the crowd towards the woman, giving the teenagers a glare she wishes she could manage before wrapping one arm around the woman’s waist to support her, that she remembers them.

When they’re seated in her section, the woman’s bump almost pressed against the edge of the table, their hands entwined across the table with wedding rings glinting in the sunlight, Kate approaches them a little slowly. Because the look on the man’s face (on _Oliver’s_ face, she remembers), as he gazes at his wife, is the softest and most reverent thing she’s ever seen. It almost feels like sacrilege to interrupt it.

But the woman—Felicity, and she embodies the name now more than ever—sees her approach and grins, and they all greet each other with happy laughs and excited catching up, hastened a bit by the bustle of the room around her and the glares from other tables. But Kate can’t remember the last time she felt this happy at work.

And when it comes time for them to order, Kate smiles down at Felicity and says, “The usual?” 


	10. Movie Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity shares a casual night at the movies with Oliver... which really should not be so difficult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More suburban drabbles, guys!! Finally my boring suburban life is good for something!! Not that any of these are from personal experience… >.> (they’re really not; I’m far too boring) 
> 
> And this yet again continues the series of Olicity’s adventures in public indecency. Mostly because I only know one way to end a fic, apparently.

Felicity is surprised to discover that Oliver _my-body-is-a-temple-that-Felicity-Smoak-worships-at-the-altar-of-the-salmon-ladder_ Queen… likes buttery movie theater popcorn. A lot.

So much so that they get the large, ridiculously overpriced _tub_ to share at the theater where they’re seeing the latest mindless action blockbuster. It’s been a long time since she’s seen a movie in the theaters, considering how busy all those nighttime activities made her life—and while she can’t claim to be entirely above the occasional pirated movie (it’s just too _easy_ ), she remembers why she liked the experience of the theater so much. The red velvet seats, the ornate sconces on the walls, the giant screen edged with bunched curtains she’s pretty sure they don’t even use anymore.

And Oliver, sitting next to her in the seats she’s chosen—middle of the theater, middle of the row, best in the house—shoulders so broad that he’s infringing into her space over the armrest, but she doesn’t mind. The tub rests in his lap, and she’s munching happily as they wait for the previews to start.

“I never really understood the appeal of the hole-in-the-bottom-of-the-bucket trick,” she says, by way of conversation, digging into the popcorn that _would_ be conveniently placed. “I mean, I _get_ it, obviously—men will put it anywhere if it will get some attention, but I feel like that would ruin unbelievably expensive popcorn. And wouldn’t that just get butter and salt into some really unfortunate places? Although, I guess, that might be-”

“ _Felicity_ ,” Oliver says, sounding almost pained even though he’s smiling. The middle-aged couple who were sitting behind them have now stood and are moving down the row away from them.

“Oh, sorry,” she says, whispering with a wince. “You weren’t like, planning to do that or anything, right?”

“What? No,” Oliver says with a frown and a jerk of his head, looking almost insulted.

“It just kind of sounds like something… you know, _Ollie_ would’ve done.”

He stares straight ahead as the previews start. “No comment.”

The previews are all big and loud and give away far too much of each movie, but they’re still her favorite part. Then the lights dim completely, and for a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of munching popcorn and the jiggle of ice and air sucked through straws.

Overall, the movie is pretty good. The soundtrack is great, the costumes gorgeous—Felicity has major shoe envy—and the plot, while a bit nonsensical, is fairly well-executed for a spy movie. Oliver will occasionally scoff or shake his head at an action stunt, no doubt knowing exactly how that would _really_ happen, but he seems to be enjoying himself.

About halfway through, the teenage girls in the row in front of them start texting on their phones, the screens glowing in the dark. Oliver tenses a little with irritation beside her, but his crusade for justice doesn’t extend to bratty teenagers. Felicity, on the other hand, holds her large purse on her lap to use her tablet _while_ shielding the glow of the screen, like a decent human being.

“Hey, my phone stopped working,” the girl in front of them suddenly whines. When her friend asks her about it, she’s frantically pressing buttons around the black screen. “I don’t know, it just shut off.”

“ _Ssshh_ ,” someone else in the theater hisses, now that they’re talking out loud, and the girls scrunch down in their seats with embarrassed huffs.

As Felicity puts her bag back on the floor, Oliver looks over at her, smirking and squeezing a hand tighter around her knee.

It’s about three quarters of the way through when Felicity regrets everything.

The heroes are on a boat—that’s _sinking_ , while they cling to a life raft in a violent storm. Her hand tightens around Oliver’s above his knee, while his has gone slack, other than the twitch of his thumb brushing over the side of his index finger. His other knee bounces erratically.

“Are you okay?” she leans in to whisper against his ear. Why, _why_ didn’t she research every spoiler for this movie before suggesting it? One trailer that did _not_ spoil everything, and it had to be _this._

“I’m fine,” he whispers back. But his body has gone rigid, and he expels a long breath as the next scene shows the heroes floating aimlessly in the water, tired and dehydrated and discussing their depleted resources.

“We can leave—let’s leave,” she says, and she’s already reaching for her bag, but Oliver’s hand tugs her back.

“Felicity, I’m _fine_.”

She frowns at him, eyes searching his face, which is fixed into a harsh, blank expression. She leans in again to whisper, “Or we can make out.” She kisses him softly beneath his ear, trailing kisses down his jaw, loving the scratch of stubble across her lips.

“Felicity…” he murmurs, half in protest, but he turns his head towards her and captures her lips with his, as they both sink down slightly in their chairs. They are in the middle of the theater, after all.

The popcorn tub has already been abandoned to the floor, so her hand encounters no resistance as it slides up his thigh and over the zipper of his jeans, reaching for the clasp. His breath hitches and goes husky against her mouth, one hand clenched tightly around her knee but skimming up her bare thigh, the other gripping the opposite armrest. He’s not thinking about the movie anymore.

And that is how they are banned from the Rosemont Cineplex.


	11. Focus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver has a little trouble... focusing during TV night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was just a teeny little prompt on Tumblr, but I thought I might as well add it to the collection just to be complete. :)
> 
> Also a teeny bit E, so if that's not your thing, be warned.

“Oliver, you’re _missing it_ ,” she hisses, smacking him on the stomach. He jolts forward with a small grunt, but returns immediately to dragging his lips across her neck.

It had been her idea, with bad summer TV and their still-new excess of free time, to start filling in his pop culture gaps. Curling up on the couch together had become one of her favorite parts of the day, laying her legs across his lap while his thumb stroked across her thigh, or snuggling against his shoulder with his arm around her waist.

Except his hands had a habit of… wandering.

“Come on, this part has subtitles—they’re explaining-” she tries to tell him, but one of his hands cups her jaw and pulls her into a kiss that’s hot and tender all at once, something she can never resist.

His other hand is skimming up her thigh, nudging under the hem of her floral-print cotton shorts. She’d thought maybe shorts would provide a little more hindrance than a dress—but she has a feeling Oliver Queen has never met a piece of clothing he couldn’t get into.

When his fingertips brush down the front of her panties, she squirms against him and grabs the sides of his face—to yank it away from hers. He’s smirking unapologetically, fingers still exploring below, and her attempt at a glare is severely diminished by her slightly panting breaths.

“I thought you would like _Game of Thrones_ ,” she says with a pout.

“I do,” he says, his eyes sparking  with heat as he leans in again.

It had started during the sex scene—as it had gone on and on, with women moaning and exposed breasts everywhere, Oliver had started shifting in his seat and swallowing thickly. Supposedly, the show is using sex to keep their interest, but she could tell the moment Oliver stopped thinking about the show entirely, as he turned his nose into her hair to nip at her earlobe.

And now _she’s_ struggling to pay attention.

“But you’re not watching,” she says, biting her lip against a moan as his hand slips under the edge of her underwear, and he has proof she’s not as opposed to this idea as she claims.

“At the moment, there are… other things I’d rather be doing,” he says, voice rumbling against her chin.

“What a romantic proposition, Oliver, I’m swooning,” she mutters, but her hands are gliding up the sides of his arms to curl into the fabric of his sleeves and pull him against her. His shoulders are curling around her, his lips trailing down to skate over her collarbone.

For one last moment, she watches the show over the top of his arm, and then she falls back into the plush cushions of their couch with a sigh that edges into a groan.

Because how can anything, even dragons, compete with Oliver Queen?


	12. Favorites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having neighbors comes with some unexpected responsibilities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A pure, unadulterated ball of fluff. :)

Felicity opens the front door onto a picture of chaos.

It’s the little boy wailing and covered in blood that draws her wide eyes first, though it’s swiftly followed by the crying baby balanced precariously on the woman’s hip, and then the weary face of the woman herself, her neighbor Amy, in the middle of it all.

“Is he—is he okay?” Felicity asks, peering behind them into the street. Her first thought is that they’re fleeing from some criminal assailant (and she decides not to examine the life choices that have made _that_ her first thought, _always_ )—but it’s two o’clock on a Tuesday, and the sky is a clear blue with a pleasant breeze, and the rest of the street is silent and still.

“He’s fine,” Amy says with a sigh, though the boy is taking deep, shuddering breaths with streaks of blood dripping from a gash at his hairline. “He just fell off the slide—Felicity, I’m sorry to ask this, but can you watch Mia until Chris can get out of work? I just changed her, she shouldn’t be too much trouble, but I have to take Matthew to get stitches.”

Felicity swallows past the automatic twitch of her stomach at that image—though, with Oliver and Team Arrow constantly covered in blood and stitching each other up, she’s handling this much better than she would have a couple years ago. And that, too, says something about the way her life has changed, but she’s not sure if it’s good or bad.

“Um, yeah, sure,” she says, because what else can she say? The little girl is under a year old, and she’s hiccupping with big dark eyes glistening with tears, wearing a fuzzy pink onesie—and she reminds her a little of Sara, who she misses, as she sometimes misses all of them.

And all of… _it_. But now’s not the time.

So Felicity reaches out to take the small, squirming body, cradling the diapered bottom in her hand as she pulls the baby to her chest. The head of soft, dark curls is thrown back in a wail when her mother’s hands leave her, while Amy reaches for the diaper bag slung over one shoulder. Felicity starts to gently bounce the baby against her side, even as the tiny knees and toes dig sharply into her stomach.

“Thank you so much,” Amy says, uncaring as Matthew leans against her leg and smears blood across her jeans. “Chris should be here in an hour, two at the most—are you and Oliver going to be okay with that?”

“Yeah, that’s fine—he should be back from his jog soon, but we can just do it later.” When Amy blinks, Felicity closes her eyes and briefly imagines a blissful universe where every vague statement isn’t simultaneously a sexual innuendo, and vows to herself she will invent interdimensional travel and find it. “By ‘it,’ of course, I mean the grocery shopping we had planned—not, like, _it_ —though, I mean, we probably-”

“Thank you, Felicity!” Amy says as she starts leading the whimpering Matthew off their porch, having spent enough time with her to know there’s only one way this ends.

So Felicity is left standing in her foyer holding a sobbing baby, with no toys or books or ideas on how to entertain her.

“You want to hear the story of the princess and the broken modem?” she asks, but Mia’s face is scrunched up and red, and she seems uninterested in this offer. Felicity closes the front door, kicking the diaper bag across the hardwood floor towards the great room, swinging Mia lightly against her hip.

“How about the story of the lost prince who comes back to save the kingdom and then finds his true love?” Felicity presses the tip of her nose into one soft, plump cheek, and adds in a whisper against Mia’s cries, “It’s my favorite.”

XXXXX

The first thing Oliver hears when he steps into the house, ignoring the twinge in his knee, is Felicity’s voice. He takes a second to realize it’s high-pitched and edged with laughter, and he wonders who is on the phone to make her sound like that.

Then he hears the baby giggling.

His first thought is Sara—that Digg is here, and what that could mean, though it only takes him a minute to remember there was no car in the driveway, and he’s trying to puzzle through alternate possibilities—were they dropped off? Is she talking to the TV? (…It’s Felicity; that could definitely be it)—when his steps bring him to the edge of the great room…

And he stops.

Felicity kneels over the baby lying on the rug (Amy’s baby, he remembers, after a second of wondering whose baby she may have stolen), the golden waves of her hair falling forward around her face as she playfully nips at the baby’s wriggling belly. Tiny hands clench around strands of her hair, tugging on them and waving in the air with each happy squeal, the little feet caught in Felicity’s hands as she rolls her back and forth.

“Hey, those are mine,” Felicity says with a laugh, the baby’s hands grabbing hold of the corners of her glasses and starting to tug them off her face. But instead of pulling away, she shakes the ends off of her ears so the baby can seize them and lift them over her head victoriously, miniature fingertips smudging the lenses as the baby gives a little shriek of mischievous triumph.

“You got them, you little cutie, look at you,” Felicity coos, hands tickling up the baby’s sides. “I happen to think girls look pretty cool with glasses—I mean, your mom doesn’t wear them, and she’s cool—but don’t ever let anyone tell you they’re nerdy. Because here’s the big secret—being a nerd is _awesome_. I mean, I can create computer programs that save people, and I can pretty much hack into anything—um, not that you should ever do that, it’s very bad, but it’s also, like, _really useful_ —and you met Oliver at the barbecue, right? I mean, _right_? And you haven’t even seen him on the salmon ladder.”

He doesn’t mean to release the huff of laughter through the grin he’s sure is stretching across his face, but it’s enough for Felicity to jerk up and look at him—blinking through the blurriness of her vision without glasses.

“And, you know, there’s all of his other great, non-physical qualities, of course,” she adds hastily, as the baby starts nibbling on one corner of her glasses. “Because there are many. Too many, really, you ridiculous… man…”

Her muttering trails off as he approaches them, but he just crouches beside them, still smiling helplessly. He’s sweaty from the run, but he’s no longer tired or sore.

“Amy’s daughter—Mia, right?” he asks Felicity, who nods a little uncertainly.

He reaches out to gently pull the glasses from Mia’s grasp and drag them away from her mouth, as her baby teeth scrape across the lens. She squawks and reaches for them, but Felicity takes them from his hand as he bends over Mia’s round face, her flailing hand landing against his jaw. When her tiny palm encounters his stubble, she quiets, looking at him with wide-eyed fascination as her soft little fingers poke experimentally across his chin. His widening grin shifts the skin beneath her touch, and she giggles.

“I’ll let you in on another secret, Mia,” he says, as both her hands cling to his cheeks and Felicity watches with her reclaimed glasses and a tender smile. The look they share echoes with promises too new and fragile to be spoken, but they see the future in each other’s eyes, hear it in the squeaks of laughter beneath them. His hand spans the entirety of the baby’s torso, her heart beating beneath his palm, as the woman who holds his own heart rests her forehead against his shoulder.

He leans in, still smiling, somehow always smiling now, and says softly, “Nerdy girls with glasses are my favorite.”


	13. Work It Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity discovers the benefits of exercise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After last night's ball of fluff, here's this little blob of random cheesiness... I don't know. :)

Felicity gasps for breath, the pains shooting sharp through her abdomen and down her legs, her heart thundering in her ears. Sweat trickles down the sides of her face, each step jarring through her body with a fresh agony.

“I can’t… no more…” she says between deep inhales.

“Come on, just to the end of the block, you’re almost there,” Oliver says, too calmly.

And she decides she is going to kill him.

Because he’s jogging _backwards_ in front of her, barely out of breath, smiling at her like her impending death is somehow funny—and the world doesn’t need Oliver Queen any longer, right? He had a good run—oh God, _run_ … Her legs were made for high heels and dangling from spinning desk chairs and straddling infuriating vigilantes, _not_ this endless torture disguised as exercise.

She just glares at him, unable to form more words through her wheezing, wisps of sweat-damp hair falling out of her ponytail and around her face.

The last few driveways of the block pass like entire miles, but finally she crosses the curve of the street and stumbles to a stop, bending forward with her hands on her hips. Oliver has stopped a few feet away, approaching her slowly until he’s standing right in front of her—and given her current mood, his sweatpants are little protection for the important body parts in close proximity to her teeth.

“Gatorade,” she says between panting breaths, holding out a hand for the pink Gatorade he’d carried for her. 

“Felicity, all that sugar-”

“Give me the goddamned Gatorade, Oliver,” she says, on the edge of her loud voice, and he hands it over without a word. She stands to gulp down the cold, sweet liquid with a flavor that could best be described as “pink.”

After a few minutes of silently watching her with a smug grin, Oliver takes a few steps down the street and says, “Let’s start walking home.”

“No,” she says, still a bit out of breath. “I’m not moving again. This street corner is now my home. That patch of grass, right there, is my bed, and you are not welcome there because you are _evil_.”

“This was your idea, Felicity,” he says patiently.

“I wanted to start exercising more because of all your ridiculous baking,” she mutters, and then she throws up her hands and sighs dramatically. “Can’t we just have more sex? Like, I kind of thought that was one of the benefits, besides the obvious, of course—I mean, I can just be on top every time, because _that_ is a workout, especially when we—oh, hi, Christine.”

The woman walking her dog past them on the sidewalk smiles weakly and says, “Hello, Felicity, …Oliver.” She doesn’t stop.

Oliver’s eyes fill with heated amusement as he looks at Felicity. “As your trainer, I can heartily recommend that option. But we have to get home first.”

“Oh, but see, I already had my workout for today, so-”

She lets out a startled squawk when he picks her up, and he starts walking quickly, because of course the run that nearly killed her was nothing to him. Or maybe he’s just particularly… motivated.

“Then I better let you rest for a minute,” he says, not even out of breath.

And she promises herself, by the time she’s done with him, _he_ will be the one left gasping.

She never thought exercise could be so rewarding.


	14. Take Me Out to the Ballgame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver and Felicity enjoy the classic American pastime... as only they can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another suburban life drabble–and anyone who has been following this series knows how it will end. Every time I tell myself it’s the last time, and then I can’t help myself, because they can’t help themselves… sigh. :)

“What do you mean you’ve never had Dippin’ Dots?” she says, almost shouting as he shrugs. The little boy a few rows down gleefully clutches the tiny baseball helmet filled with the frozen treat, and Felicity turns to the man beside her with a playful glare. “Oh, right, you were probably in skyboxes, eating _crème brulee_ and _cherries jubilee_.”

“Not… always,” Oliver says, with a helpless smile. “Okay, what are they?”

“Um, only one of the greatest culinary inventions America has ever created—they’re freeze-dried little ice cream balls—well, not _balls_ , really, more like… dots. Obviously.”

“Mmhmm,” he says, still sounding skeptical. But he takes in her glare with a grin. “Is this your way of saying you want some?”

“Yes, please,” she says, nodding with a swing of her ponytail.

Oliver stands from his seat in the small, simple ballpark, the metal chair folding in half as his weight leaves it. Out on the field, the Rosemont County Tigers are playing… some team from… somewhere, she isn’t really paying attention. They might even be below minor league, but the tickets were cheap and part of his new leisure time has allowed Oliver to get back into sports… a lot. Her efforts at support mostly extend to sitting next to him while he watches things and trying not to complain.

With him not there to entertain her, she takes out her smart phone and starts checking her e-mail, eyeing Palmer Tech’s stock portfolio, scanning the new photos Thea has added to Instagram. When someone does something out on the field and the stands around her erupt into cheers, she doesn’t even look up, more interested in the video of Sara giggling that Lyla sent her.

The guy sitting a few chairs down the row scoffs and grumbles angrily, “Why do you even bother to come if you’re just going to be on your phone?”

“What?” she asks, and now she’s looking up, and this is his chance to pretend it never happened.

But apparently she has struck a nerve, because he stares right at her and says, “Your generation is always glued to those things—you don’t even know how to live anymore. That’s what’s wrong with this country.”

“My _generation_?” she says, starting to feel her loud voice coming on—because if she has to read one more article about how the millennials are ruining the world that the baby boomers _trashed_ , she’s going to show them _exactly_ what a millennial with a smart phone can do. “Um, I’m sorry, but my generation is what’s going to _save_ this country from your greed and corruption and shortsightedness, and we’re going to use wifi to do it—and for your information, I’m watching a video of my friend’s baby, and that’s a lot more important than some point or catch or whatever.”   

“Okay, sure, lady,” the man says. “Just, next time, don’t waste your money and stay home.”

“Excuse me?” She gapes at him, eyebrows raised high over the tops of her glasses, and then she looks down at her smart phone to start pinging his accounts based on GPS, because _someone’s_ wife is getting an alert from their new Ashley Madison account. But she can’t help lifting her head again to say, “And just so you know, I’m here for my boyfriend—who is _amazing_ , by the way, and the best thing my ‘generation’ will _ever_ produce, and, like, the best sex I’ve ever had, that maybe anyone has ever had in the history of sex, I mean-”

“Look, I don’t care,” the man says gruffly, and he turns to his friend beside him and mutters, “Bitch.”

Felicity almost doesn’t hear the angry, “What did you just say?” over her own offended gasp, but she’d know that voice anywhere. The man rolls his eyes at his friend, as if to say, “here we go,” but when his gaze finds Oliver, his eyes go comically wide.

When Felicity looks up at him, she can’t help thinking that in her opinion, the two small cups of colorful dots cradled in his hands in no way diminishes the sheer _presence_ of his Arrow glare.  

“I—I’m sorry,” the man says hastily.

Oliver says nothing, shoulders tense, jaw clenched, and Felicity snags a hold of his t-shirt and tugs on it. “Come on, Oliver, it’s fine,” she says, and then she lifts her smart phone and waves it at him, lifting one eyebrow.

As his harsh stare falls on it and then her, his face curls into a smirk, and with one last frown at the guy he sits down beside her. The cup he hands her is full of green and brown little dots, and she grins brightly at him.

“You got me mint chocolate!” She leans over to kiss him on the cheek, lingering for just a moment against his stubbled jaw, reaching over after to brush away the smear of pink across his skin. “Clearly you were the right man for this mission.”

“And you got in a fight at a ball game,” he says, as she fills her mouth with a spoonful of the strange ice cream. Then his hand lands roughly on her bare knee, and he presses his lips to her ear to add in a searing whisper, “God, I love you.”

The frozen dots stuck to her tongue are intensely cold in the sudden flush of heat, as his lips drift to that spot just beneath her ear, and when he pulls away she meets his gaze while biting her lip. She’s drawn to him like gravity, her own free hand sliding over his solid denim-clad thigh, their mouths meeting in the middle with the taste of mint and chocolate melting between them. Nearly dropping the cup of Dippin’ Dots onto the dirty concrete ground, she wonders if they’ll be completely melted by the time they find somewhere… private…

And that is how they are banned from the Rosemont County Stadium. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: my first job ever was at a Dippin’ Dots stand at a minor league baseball stadium. Ah, America…


	15. All In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver is all in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a teeny little nugget of fluff.

The woman’s startled shriek a few tables over has Oliver jumping half out of his chair, until he realizes that her face is breaking into a happy smile while staring down at a ring in the man’s hand—a ring, not a gun or a bomb. As he slowly lowers himself back into his seat, the room around them erupts into applause while the woman’s head nods exaggeratedly and she holds out her hand.

Felicity claps along with the others, but her expression is a frown. For a moment, his heart pounds, as he thinks of all the reasons a proposal would put that look on her face.

She leans across their table, hair hanging too close to the candle between them, and says quietly, “Proposals in a public place are so tacky—making it all about the spectacle and attention. I mean, I’m happy for them and everything, but I think I…”

Then her body jerks back, eyes flaring wide, and her hands fly up in front of her as if to ward him off. “Not— _not_ that I’m thinking about proposals—I mean, I’m not _not_ thinking about it, because I love you, but it is not, you know, something that I would even—it’s only been a couple months, right, that’s way too… I swear, Oliver, I’m not… Oh God, I don’t even know where to start counting…”

“Felicity, it’s fine,” he says, shaking his head with a smile. Then he meets her eyes directly, seeing the flicker of candlelight across her face, catching in the golden waves of her hair down around her shoulders, sparkling over the beading in her blue dress. She is a sky full of stars, and he can read his future in the constellations.

He tilts forward slightly, hands clasped in his lap, knee starting to bounce lightly. “I’m all in,” he says softly, intently.

“Oh…” she breathes. “Well, that’s, um… wow. And, obviously… me too.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but it echoes in his ears.

The waiter arrives then to set the dessert down between them, something piled high with ice cream and chocolate sauce that Felicity will eat most of, but for a moment, they continue to just stare at each other. Then the waiter is asking if they want more wine, and Felicity breaks the spell to look up at him and say she needs nothing else, that she may not need anything ever again, except isn’t a glass of red wine a day supposed to be healthy or something, so maybe giving that up would be a bit extreme… And the waiter is smiling at her with the eyes of a trapped animal, hovering anxiously at the edge of the table and trying to make the kindest possible getaway.

Oliver can feel his face stretching into a grin, the burst of happiness in his chest something he wants to hold onto forever. Everything between them, just beginning to be spoken, is not quite ready to be declared tonight.

But he knows… it will be soon.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.S. I have nothing against public proposals, if anyone out there had one. :)


	16. With You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity contemplates the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just another little fluff-nugget.

The park near their house glows with the purple light of sunset, the air still thick with humid warmth, and bursting with the sounds of tiny rapid footsteps through the gravel and high-pitched laughter and the rusty squeaks of swings.

Sitting on the bench with the cup of gelato she’s trying to feed to an impossibly well-disciplined Oliver, Felicity basks in the summer breeze tickling under the hem of her skirt and watches the children scampering across the playground. Oliver leans back against the bench, arms across the top, one hand teasing his fingertips over her bare shoulder. When she glances over at him, he’s completely relaxed, face curled into a small smile that might just be his resting expression now… and that, more than anything else, fills her with an impossible joy.

One girl shrieks in delight, drawing Felicity’s eyes as a little girl with long fair hair and a pink cotton dress clings to the top of a see-saw high in the air. A larger boy sits on the other end, hair buzzed short, bouncing up and down to jolt the girl as her tiny pink sneakers kick wildly on either side.

She’s never been one to think too much about kids—Sara, sure, but that’s because she’s part-Digg (and part-Lyla, of course) so she’s bound to be one of the best people ever. But she’s been so focused on her career, and then on her evening activities, and the roller coaster of death and danger and self-sacrificing bravery that her life had become… She hadn’t really thought too much about the future, other than the vague sense of wanting one. With Oliver.

But now, this summer, in the house they’re renting, where they curl up to watch TV, and go grocery shopping together while arguing about how much kale is too much (answer: all), and walk to the strip of shops downtown for gelato and stop in the park on the way home…

She might just be living in her future.

They’ve never really talked about it, though—so far, lying in bed around the world or in their new home, they’ve talked about the past more than anything… Exes and family and holiday memories, their wildly differing high school experiences and the colleges he dropped out of, favorite movies and the songs that get stuck in their heads and Halloween costumes, childhood fears and pet peeves and how much he loves that damn towel… (When she realizes how much he treasures small excesses of comfort after the island, she vows he’ll have nothing but plush fabrics and thick pillowtops from now on.)

They haven’t talked about… this.

“Do you…?” she starts, and she already knows this is not going to go well. “I mean, I want to be clear that I’m asking just to, you know, ask, _not_ because I’m thinking this is—not that it’s _not_ , I just don’t want you to feel like I’m, um, trying to hint or anything, because I’m so _not_ —but it’s kind of a conversation that we might, sort of, need to _have_ … at some point, I guess… but maybe not now, if you don’t-”

“Felicity,” he says, and she finally looks at him after avoiding eye contact that whole time. He’s smiling. “You actually need to ask me a question before I can answer.”

“Do you want one?” she asks, forcing the words out all at once, and looking back over at the kids on the playground. The parents lingering around the edges of the park are starting to call them in, as the sunlight dims further into night. “Not one of _these_ , of course, I’m pretty sure they’re all taken—and not _now_ , either, just… in general.”

His face grows serious and thoughtful, and he tilts his head as he too watches the kids hang from the monkey bars and flow down the slides and chase each other over the grass.

“Yeah,” he says, voice soft. “I think I do. Someday.” His fingers trail through her ponytail as he pulls his arms back in against himself. “Do you?”

She bites her lip, thinking, _feeling_. And finally she says, “Yes. Someday.”

As they look at each other in the last strands of sunset, they both see the unspoken words in each other’s eyes.

_With you._

But they say nothing more, standing together from the bench and walking back towards home, hands intertwined between them and their future stretching out ahead. For now, though, there’s nothing more to think about than the dishes piling in the sink and the recording slots on the DVR and the last spoonfuls of gelato in her hand.

“You sure you don’t want this last bite of gelato?” she asks, wiggling the paper cup in front of his face, as he smirks at her.

“You can have it.”

“I bet if it was kale-flavored, you would eat it. But then, you know, I would be throwing it up over there.”

“I don’t eat kale because it tastes good—I eat it because it’s healthy. Which gelato isn’t.”

“Um, gelato is healthy for the _soul_ , Oliver.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, it is. I’m very smart, I know these things.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Are you questioning me? I _am_ going to get you to eat gelato one of these days.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe if I smeared it all over my body…”

“…Do you think we should go back and get more?”


	17. The Coldest Couch in Vegas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver doesn't always get what he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to try exploring a little more of Oliver’s humor, since I worry I write him a little one-note sometimes–so I have no idea if this is in character or what, but the idea occurred to me and here we are… :)

“No.”

“Felicity…”

“I’m sorry, Oliver—you _know_ I am—but no. We can’t.”

“Maybe just-”

“No. Not even a little.”

He looks at her with those puppy dog eyes (and really, it’s not fair that the same pair of blue eyes are capable of piercing Arrow glares _and_ sappy heart eyes—she was doomed from the start), as he presses a scratchy kiss against her bare shoulder, and she really should have worn the baggy t-shirt instead of her comfy purple tank top.

But even as he shifts onto his side to wrap his arm around her waist, hand skimming up her ribs with obvious intent, the springs of the fold-out couch give a wrenching squeak that strengthens her resolve.

“Oliver,” she mutters in an admittedly weak warning, as he scoots closer to drag his lips up her neck and under her ear, and she wants so badly to turn into his arms and fall into him—but just her squirming slightly has the thin mattress groaning loudly.

In her grandmother’s living room.

His warm sigh blows across her throat, and he drops his head forward to rest his forehead against her cheek. “We should have gotten a hotel room.”

“Did you want to be the one to tell my Nana that we weren’t going to stay here and let her cook for us and make up the pullout couch and wake us up with fresh-brewed coffee—just so we could have more sex?” Felicity lowers her voice to a whisper on the last word, as though her tiny grandmother was in the next room instead of upstairs with the TV on.

“Well, I maybe wouldn’t phrase it that way…”

“I think you can make it.”

He smiles and shakes his head, brushing his nose across her collarbone. “We can be quiet.”

“That’s what you said the last time, and I do _not_ want a repeat of the motel security guard incident—we traumatized that family! I knew those walls were too thin.”

“‘Traumatized’ is a little strong. The kids were teenagers—maybe they learned something.”

“This is my _Nana,_ Oliver. We’re here for her _80 th birthday party_—and this couch is like sleeping on bagpipes.” She shoves him away, gently, and he goes only because he knows he’s lost the fight—otherwise she wouldn’t be able to budge his heavy, solid body. But the chorus of squeals as he shifts over to his side of the bed is the death knell to his case.

"Fine," he says, resigned, but he still reaches over to tease his fingertips down her arm, snagging her hand between them. When he lifts it to his face to kiss the back of her hand, he looks over at her with a teasing smirk and says, “Is this still okay?”

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I forget you were a frat boy, what with the heroism and the gallantry and the red pens you bought for your desk… and then sometimes you are such a _guy_.” She looks over at his unapologetic face, and can’t help smiling at him. He looks so content and just… _happy_ (even if he’s trying to seem like he could be a little happier).

And bare-chested, she notes, as the thin white sheet pinned beneath his bicep reveals the expanse of his unclothed shoulders. “I literally never thought I would say these words, _ever,_ but if you get up to go to the bathroom or something, could you maybe put a shirt on? You’ll give Nana a heart attack.”

He frowns. “Oh, the scars?”

“No, not the scars—well, not _just_ the scars. The… everything. All of this.”

“You’re gesturing at my entire body.”

“I’m aware. Don’t stop doing any of that. Just spare my Nana the… shock.”

“Maybe it’d be a nice birthday present—she’s 80, not dead.”

“It could kill her.”

“Good way to go.”

“That’s it—you’ve been spending too much time with my mother. And why is that a sentence that follows this conversation?” She groans and covers her face.

“Sshh, quiet—that sound might give your grandmother ideas.”

“Oh my God.”

“That definitely will.”


	18. Love and Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love isn’t always pretty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of the stranger and more random things I’ve written–you can tell I didn’t know where I was going with it, and still don’t. I debated even posting it, but there’s an aspect to Felicity’s character here that I find interesting (and am curious to see if it will be ‘in character’), so… *shrug*. As I said, nothing but quality work around here, folks. :P

“Oliver, let me in.”

“No.”

“Come on,  _please_.”

“Felicity, I’m fine.” His voice is gravelly and raw, and she leans her forehead against the cold painted wood of the door until the frames of her glasses bite into her skin. It’s a small and inadequate punishment.

“I won’t… I just want to… This is a part of this, you know,” she says, trying not to sound belligerent when it’s her fault he’s in there. “I signed up for everything, not just the amazing sex and the brave hero and the salmon ladder and whatever. I want  _all_ of it—even this.”

The…  _noises_  stopped fifteen minutes ago, and if she didn’t know that love was more than sex and candlelight before that, she knew it now. She thought that was the worst of it—but the silence, punctuated only by the occasional stifled groan or heavy breath, is far worse.

“And, I mean, if you can still love me after I did this to you—not to assume that, um, you can—you’ve got a pretty clear vision of the future here, which does  _not_  include me cooking Thanksgiving dinners or baking birthday cakes, so if that’s something you were hoping—though I never said-”

“Felicity…” he says with a soft sigh that slides beneath the crack under the door. In that weary sound, she hears the same exasperated affection that she has built this new life out of, and it makes her want to break down the door between them.

It was a bad idea from the start.

Oliver has been cooking her all of these amazing meals, once they settled into the house on the quiet suburban street, and the guilt started early. It blossomed into something feral and biting as the neighborhood women sent her jealous and disbelieving stares over his contributions to barbecues; and she began to wonder what  _she_  brings to this domestic paradise, other than a new kind of evening (and morning, and afternoon) activity that he seems fairly enthusiastic about.

But he doesn’t need her to hack federal databases or direct him through schematics over the comms or cross-reference records and evidence anymore. The company doesn’t need her to submit project proposals or sit in on board meetings or make presentations to investors anymore.

In this new life, she has never felt more wanted. But she doesn’t always feel… _needed_.

For some ridiculous, illogical reason, this meant she needed to cook something—something amazing. Because that’s what domestic goddesses did, right?  

But she shouldn’t have started with seafood.

And she shouldn’t have bought it on clearance.

She tried to make the fancy hors d’oeuvres that she’d seen him eat in alarming quantities at a gala once, even though she didn’t like them herself. They had looked… close enough, she’d thought with a squint, and he’d been surprised when he came home from a run to see the candles lit and the crab puffs laid out in an attempt at elegant “plating.” He’d said they were good, even though he didn’t quite gush like she was sort of hoping, but he smiled and kissed her and sat down to eat.

And then he got quieter, and quieter, and fell silent… His face growing stiffer and more blank with each moment.

Now here they are. Felicity almost wants to go back and eat one of the infernal things just to share in the torment, as if self-flagellation by crab puff could strip away any of his pain.

“Oliver, I’m so sorry,” she says quietly, nose pressed against the door. “I just wanted to be perfect for you, I guess. In more than just the bedroom—‘cause yeah, I’m kind of rocking it in there. And in the shower, and the kitchen that one time, and the great room couch—okay, you get the idea. I mean, you’re pulling your weight there, too, don’t get me wrong, like  _whoa_ … Wait, this is not what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell you that I love you, and this is everything I wanted, but sometimes I feel a little… useless, here. And I…”

The lock clicks on the door, and her grip suddenly finds the handle swinging beneath it, so that she’s stumbling through the opening door head first. But she manages to stop herself, standing in the doorway, looking down at Oliver leaning against the wall and looking sheepishly up at her.

He’s pale beneath the shadow of his stubble, and his hairline is shiny with sweat, and he’s leaning on one shaky arm against the tile floor. She’s never seen him look so… small; she didn’t think he could.

But the strangest feeling flashes through her, though this is one thing she manages not to say out loud. Something about him looking so… human… It makes her feel like he’s not impossibly out of her reach.

It makes her feel needed.

So she grabs the hand towel off the wall and wets it with cold water from the sink, kneeling on the floor beside him and coaxing his head into her lap, wiping the sweat from his brow with one hand while combing her fingers gently through his hair with the other. He keeps telling her he’s ready to get up, hating the vulnerable sprawl across the bathroom floor, but she keeps insisting that he lie there for just a minute longer in her arms.

This domestic bliss will not last. She will need work, she will need power, she will need purpose. But for now, this incredible man needs her to love him, to show him how to be loved.

And that is a mission she is more than happy to master.


	19. Ultimate Bird Watching

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, the neighbors notice...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Semi-inspired by a Tumblr post by yet-i-remain-quiet. Though, of course, this pretty much occurred to me the moment we saw that first promo. It’s the suburbs; they would notice. And it’s another outside POV, so that’s fun. :)

Edna used to take her coffee on the back patio.

Her house may not be much, and the yard is nothing more than a small patch of grass surrounded by trees and the encroaching backyards of the houses that sprang up around hers—but she liked the sparkle of dew on the blades of grass, the squirrels leaping between the trees, and the birds fluttering amidst the leaves. Sitting in the wrought iron chair with a hot mug of coffee in her hands, looking at the dappled sunlight falling over the brick patio, was everything she needed in the morning.

But this summer, the view from the front porch has greatly improved.

It starts one morning with the doorbell and the large package left on her stoop. Something from her daughter, one more electronic doodad to supposedly make her life easier, though she keeps telling her to leave her be (she won’t admit how much she likes the motorized recliner that lifts her out of the seat). And now this, whatever it is, in a box sitting stubbornly in front of her door—she’ll have to leave it until it grows legs, she supposes.

Yet as she nudges the box out of the way, trying to figure out if there is a way to inch it into the house, she hears the patter of footsteps in the street. It’s not too early in the morning, but there is still a hush to the world, and so the slap of sneakers on the asphalt is loud enough to draw her gaze.

A man jogs down the center of the street, green t-shirt and sweatpants clinging to a large and well-formed body, his face settled into a pleasant smile. A young buck, Edna thinks to herself, that’s what her Frank would have called him. She remembers the days when Frank jogged around in his military shirts, with shoulders just as broad, before potbellies and balding heads and magnified glasses—even the young buck’s scruffy jaw reminds her with a jolt of bittersweet memory of Frank’s whiskery kisses to her cheek when they’d cross paths in the kitchen.

With a sigh, Edna looks away with a sad smile, glad to see someone young and happy out enjoying the world. Even Frank the old sourpuss would have wanted that.

As she turns back to the box and pushes it with fragile arms along the wooden boards of the porch, she hears the footsteps slow, and then grow louder.

“Can I help you with that?” a pleasant male voice calls out, and it’s the young buck jogging up the path to her front porch, hardly out of breath even with the sweat stains on his shirt.

“I have no doubt you can,” Edna says, smiling at those warm blue eyes and feeling a spark of youth; oh, what she could do when she had glossy brown curls and a proper brassiere. “You can probably lift the darned thing in one hand, and me in the other.”

The man chuckles. “Let’s start with the box, and we’ll see how it goes from there.”

Just as she expects, he lifts the box as though it’s stuffed with feathers, and carries it through the swinging screen door and all the way to the kitchen, even when she insists he drop it in the foyer. “I won’t open the silly contraption anyway,” she sighs, but she thanks him and offers him a slice of coffee cake from the glass dish on the counter. He politely refuses.

“Probably one of those healthy types, eh?” she says as she walks him back through her house, around piles of magazines and TV trays. “I still don’t know what gluten is supposed to be.”

He laughs again—he has a nice, understated laugh, though it sounds a bit unpracticed. And after offering to help her any time she needs, the young buck is gone, back out into the wild.

If Edna decides to do a little gardening around her front porch the next morning, around the same time, well that’s just a coincidence. That time he doesn’t stop, but he waves and yells out a, “Good morning!” The flash of his smile and the bunching of his bicep as he lifts his arm are much better sights than any squirrels.

So she coaxes her visiting son-in-law into moving one of the rockers out onto the creaky front porch, without telling him why, and she finds the beauty of the suburban street is drastically improved by the local wildlife.

It’s at a game of bridge that she finds she’s not the only one in the neighborhood to have spotted the young buck. Marlene says she’s taken to watering her flowers just as he rounds the corner by her house, and Cathy says she’s never been more motivated in her power walking than when she schedules passing him on the bike path near the park. Sandy says she’s going to set him up with her granddaughter—“no wedding ring,” she crows smugly when they laugh. Rhonda scoffs and tells her to forget her granddaughter; a man like that needs someone with experience. They cackle like teenage girls, and for a moment they forget the pained hips and lost friends and empty beds at home.

But it’s a few days later that any such imaginary plans disappear in a puff—a huffing, puffing breath from a tiny red-faced blonde woman, trailing behind the young buck in colorful yoga pants. Edna can’t hear what she’s saying, but she can see the bright pink lips moving rapidly and the exasperated glare. The man stops, turning back to her with a smile on his face that outshines the sun, as the woman puts her hands on her hips and shakes wisps of hair off of her sweaty forehead.

Then the man is lunging forward, sliding his arms around her waist, hauling her in against his chest until her pink sneakers are dangling against his shins. His head is twisted, lips against her ear, and when he sets her back down she lingers a moment with her hands tangled in his shirt.

They break apart, and she’s smiling now, their hands left intertwined between them as they turn to walk together down the street.

This time, he doesn’t look up when he passes Edna’s house—he’s staring down at the little burst of sunshine beside him, like she’s the center of the universe and he’s just orbiting her helplessly. The woman’s smile back up at him, bottom lip caught between her teeth, says she could just watch him orbit forever, just as lost (and found) in him as he is in her.

_No wedding ring_ , Edna thinks. _But there will be soon._

Taking a sip of her coffee, she decides to go to that Charming Oaks mixer this weekend.

Turns out there’s still a lot of life out in the world.

And maybe she’s not quite done with it. 


	20. Oh, Donna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Donna Smoak is never short on suitors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a slightly different vibe than the suburban drabbles--but it came from a very specific prompt on Tumblr, from someone who wanted to see Donna courted by Lance and Malcolm. This was a challenge--writing characters I am NOT familiar with. So, with that said, this could be a complete disaster. But I had a little fun with the idea, and I thought I might as well add it to this collection for my AO3 peeps! :)

Felicity Smoak was forced to accept, very early on, that her mother would always get more attention from the opposite sex. Granted, in many ways, it was what both women wanted—her mother loved to dress for adoration and flattery, and while Felicity could appreciate the merits of a short skirt now and again, she didn’t mind blending in and getting the job done.

When her father left, she also had to accept that her mother’s life would never be completely free from men, though no one ever really came close to filling those vacant shoes.

“Mom, this is just going to take a minute,” Felicity says as they stand outside the office. “I’m sorry, do you mind…?”

“Waiting here like I’m back on a street corner in Vegas? No, not at all,” Donna says with a sigh, fingers combing through the ends of her golden curls, but she blinks those long lashes at Felicity and gestures towards the door. “Go on, I’ll be fine—as long as it’s not too long.”

“It won’t be, I promise,” Felicity says—and she doesn’t say that unlike some people, she always keeps her promises. That, at least, she manages to hold back; she and her mother are bridging new love and affection in their relationship, but this long visit is starting to dig up some of their less fortunate bad habits.

Oliver walks up with Captain Lance in tow, the two chatting tersely about something but stopping cold when they reach Felicity and Donna in the hallway. Oliver’s lips twitch in a small smile at them both, but Quentin’s eyebrows go up as he takes in Donna.

And Felicity has seen that look before.

“I, uh, hello,” Lance says, voice gruff and a bit uncertain. Half his face twists into a wry smile, and he holds out his hand. “Captain Lance. Quentin Lance—uh, Quentin’s fine, I mean.”

“Hi,” Donna says silkily, sliding one ring-bedecked hand into his and tossing her hair. “Donna Smoak.”

“Smoak? Like our girl here?” He has not yet let go of her hand, shaking it aimlessly between them.

“Captain, this is my mom,” Felicity says, somewhat wearily. Neither spares her a glance.

“Mom? Can’t be,” Lance says with a playful scoff. “Gotta be a sister.”

Donna giggles. “Oh, stop that, you’re too much.”

Lance grins at the sound of her laugh, opening his mouth to say something else, but Oliver shifts at his side and draws his attention.

“Still ready, _Quentin_?” Oliver says flatly.

“Oh, yeah, right,” Lance says, clearing his throat and glaring at him. He lets go of Donna’s hand, and his own hand falls to his side, fidgeting slightly. “Very nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Now don’t start with that ‘ma’am’ stuff,” Donna says teasingly. “You were doing so well.”

“Heh.” Lance ducks his head, trying to sound nonchalant, turning to walk into the room beyond.

“He’s cute,” Donna says in nearly a squeal. She runs her hands down the sides of her tight red dress, shifting the plunging neckline around her cleavage. “Who is he? Married?”

“Would it matter?” Felicity mutters very quietly beneath her breath, but it’s an unfair remark. As far as she knows, her mother isn’t nearly as promiscuous as she sometimes dresses—and it wouldn’t really be her business if she was. But she’s just tense, with Anarky and Damien Darhk closing in, and her mother in town talking about rings and babies with every breath.

Maybe distracting her with Lance would be just what she needs.

“Am I in the right place?” says an all too familiar voice behind her, and Felicity spins on her heels to see Malcolm Merlyn approaching. Her mother has spun with her, and is taking in the suit-clad man from head to toe.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Felicity grumbles, loud enough for Malcolm to hear (as she wishes), and she feels Oliver’s hand settle on her shoulder when he steps up behind her.

“In the room, Malcolm,” he says simply.

“Felicity, aren’t you going to introduce me?” Donna says, in a tone that Felicity wishes she didn’t recognize, as her mother tucks one side of her hair behind her ear with a smile.

“Malcolm Merlyn—and you must be Donna Smoak,” Malcolm says smoothly, hand pressed against his chest. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”

“Oh, I suppose my reputation precedes me,” Donna says with a little laugh, before turning to Felicity and whispering, “Merlyn like Merlyn Global? Another billionaire?”

“No,” Felicity says, a little too loudly, but they both ignore her to look back at each other.

“I make it my duty to be well-informed about my associates, especially one so talented and capable as your daughter, Ms. Smoak.” Malcolm’s face curls into a smile, blue eyes sparkling. “She really is a wonder.”

“She is, isn’t she?” Donna breathes.

“A testament to good parenting.” Malcolm bows his head forward a little, and Felicity nearly takes the chance to leap forward and scratch his eyes out. Oliver’s hand digs into her collarbone.

Donna’s white smile is beaming as she shakes her head and giggles, and that is it.

“No,” Felicity says louder, looking right at Malcolm and pointing her finger at his chest. “ _No._ Never. Like, not _ever_ —in every universe that portals could ever find, it will _never_ happen.”

“Felicity, what are you-” her mother starts.

“Mom, I changed my mind, let’s go get coffee at that place on the corner—they don’t need me here.” Felicity grabs her mother’s wrist, tugging her in the opposite direction down the hall, looking back over her shoulder at Oliver.

But he’s tight-lipped and giving Malcolm his own glare, grabbing Malcolm’s arm in a painful grip to haul him towards the next room. When Malcolm starts to say something Felicity can’t hear, she does hear Oliver expel a breath and say, “Don’t.”

“You are surrounded by so many cute men, honey,” Donna says as they walk down the hallway together at a faster pace. “Of course, you’ve got the cutest, but you don’t need all of them, do you? It seems like there are no good men in Vegas anymore—maybe I should move to Star City…”

Felicity closes her eyes and counts in her head, muttering under her breath, “I hope they serve cyanide at this café.”

“I could at least go on a few dates before I leave,” Donna is saying to herself. “Although I’ll have to go shopping for something sexy to wear—we could go together!”

Felicity actually wishes Damien Darhk would show up and end it all.

Of course, after the way this night has gone… he’d probably only end up flirting with her mother.

Maybe saving the city will be easier than they thought—if they put Donna on the case.


	21. Once Upon a Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity has discovered a new love--and it isn't Oliver Queen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will be my last fic for at least a week, guys! I’m going on vacation, so while I do hope to be around Tumblr when I can, I won’t be writing (although knowing me, I probably will, something teeny–I’ve got Olicity fever, y’all). But I wanted to write one last little fluff nugget before I left. :D

Since they left Starling City behind, Felicity has fallen in love—deeply, madly in love.

Not with Oliver (or rather, not _just_ with Oliver).

With sleep.

Years of constant coffee and adrenaline and an active brain made her think she was getting away with it—the late nights in the Foundry folding over into early mornings at the office into evening board meetings running long and back into the Foundry again. She thought she thrived on it, that she was one of those people who didn’t need much sleep to function at full capacity. Sleep was for the little people, not for MIT graduates and VPs at twenty five and vigilante teams and ninja hacker goddesses.

Except now that she’s had a real taste, of days stretching into weeks and then months of sleeping as often and long as she likes…

She’s addicted.

Oliver’s found a healthier balance, waking up to go on runs through the neighborhood and finding things to do around the house—but he doesn’t mind her new lethargic habits. It means he can usually find her on a horizontal surface, and there is _one_ thing she’ll give up sleep for… some of the time.

Other times she shoves that stupid beautiful face away from hers and snuggles deeper into the pillows.

The blinds are little protection from the sunlight streaming in this morning, birds rediscovering the world from the trees just outside their bedroom, like a conspiracy of the universe against her. Felicity groans and turns her nose into the space between her pillow and Oliver’s, her hands gathered in against her chest and still limply warm with sleep.

She hears Oliver inhaling deeply as he wakes, the arm he has pinned beneath her ribs shifting as he rolls towards her. One scratchy kiss is pressed against her bare shoulder, his eyes still closed, and the breadth of his shoulders curls around her as he folds her deeper into his embrace.

With a wordless grumble, she pushes ineffectually at his chest, while his lips slide up towards her neck. She’s still floating within her own body, not quite ready for gravity and flesh again, preferring the hazy bliss of sleep.

Sometimes, mornings are fun and cuddling and teasing hands and sleepy moans… but that was last night. Like, _all_ last night.

So this morning is going to be sleep.

“Oli… ver,” she mumbles, keeping her eyes stubbornly closed, as he kisses her cheek through her tousled hair. “Too… prickly…”

He chuckles against her chin, then murmurs, “Okay, go back to sleep.” One last kiss against the side of her nose, and he’s rolling away from her.

There’s a surge of cold, and she instinctively reaches one hand out for him, but he’s tugging the sheets up around her shoulders from his seat on the edge of the bed. She makes vague noises that are meant to be a thank you, snagging his pillow to clutch against her chest, the scent of him woodsy and familiar.

Hearing him move around quietly across the carpeted room, changing into his running clothes and carrying his sneakers in hand, fills her groggy morning dreams with the warmth of home and family. Growing up, that feeling was her mother’s spiky high heels clicking down the apartment hallway after a late night shift, or being woken on her birthday with a cupcake before her mother rushed off to work, or a blanket draped across her shoulders when she fell asleep at her desk doing homework.

Now, it’s fighting over towels, and wrapping her arms around him from behind while he stands in front of the stove, and sneaking junk food into their cart at the grocery store (and acting surprised at the checkout). It’s wearing his t-shirts around the house until he yanks them off her, and patiently explaining the family trees on _Once Upon a Time_ while she catches up before the season premiere, and pretending she cares about no-hitters and how historic they are or whatever.

It’s waking from a nap to find him curled around her, his hand tangled with hers as their knuckles brush against her heart.

It’s home… and she loves it. Almost as much as sleep.

Felicity slowly wakes some time later, when she hears the back door open and shut, and then the sneakers squeaking on the tile floor of the kitchen. The heady scent of fresh-brewed coffee and the salty smell of bacon serenades her as she rubs her hand across her face and tries to lift her head from the lush pillows. One of these days, she’s going to figure out how to make an omelette for him and repay the favor.

For now, she’s going to wake up and get her taste of home.

And then maybe they’ll come back to bed.

And not sleep.


	22. Safe and Sound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something goes bump in the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I have no idea what this is--but sleepy Olicity is clearly my new fave. :)

“Oliver… _Oliver._ ”

“Hmm?” he grumbles softly, shifting his shoulders with a long expelled breath, settling deeper into the pillow beside her. All without opening his eyes or doing much more than digging his nose further into her hair.

At first, when they left Starling, he slept lightly and fitfully, waking in the middle of the night with his heart pounding and skin slick with sweat. As time passed, especially when they settled into their new home, his sleep had gotten deeper and more solid, until he was a giant lump of warm muscle caging her in. Even when he was limp and lifeless, she never felt safer than she did in his arms, his hands sliding beneath her loose silk top, fingers twitching in sleep.

But right now she wants a little more of the tense, _aware_ vigilante—and a little less of the useless weight of her peaceful boyfriend.

“Did you hear that?” she hisses beneath his chin. Right now, they are turned towards each other, her thighs tangled around and between his thick legs, her arms curled up between them, one of his biceps a heavy weight around her waist with the other a firm pillow beneath her cheek. His whiskery jaw presses against her forehead and nose, groggily following her as she pulls away to try and look up into his face.

It’s warm and lazy and comfortable, but it’s also trapping her in sleep, when the scratching noise downstairs sounds again and strikes her with adrenaline.

“ _Oliver!_ ” She keeps her voice to a stage whisper, uncertain how they want to play this. Already, she’s leaping back into mission mode, into the darting thoughts of possible scenarios and exit strategies. There’s something about using her mind again this way that feels… _good_ , but she tries not to think too much about that.

“Wha…?” he mumbles, sounding grumpy, and she almost punches him in his firm abs (and it would _not_ be just to feel those rigid muscles beneath her knuckles; now she can feel them any time she wants, and in a lot more pleasant ways than punching).

But the next sound downstairs is a crash, something falling off a table, and she feels the tension seize Oliver’s entire body around her. Before she can even register the movement, he’s sitting up in bed, the arm formerly beneath her head now hovering over her in a defensive block, his other hand reaching for some weapon he’s stashed against the nightstand.

From suburban boyfriend to protective vigilante in .3 seconds. Nice to know not everything has changed.

As another whisper of movement downstairs echoes through the house, Oliver stands quickly from the bed, moving on silent feet towards the door in just his boxers.

“Don’t leave me here,” she whispers, grabbing her glasses from the end table and leaping up to follow him. “There could be more than one.”

He gives her a look back over his shoulder (his ridiculous broad shoulder), one eyebrow raised.

“I’m not going to fight them—but in case they double back.” She doesn’t quite want to admit to being helpless if left alone in their room, but she’s also self-aware enough to know that she can’t fight off an intruder in her silky pajamas. Staying next to Oliver is the safest place to be.

And he knows this, expelling a breath through his nose and then turning back to the hallway. He doesn’t even have to tell her to stay by his side; she hovers behind his back, fingers grazing the scars on his shoulder blades as she follows him quietly down the stairs. One of his arms lifts slightly back as they walk, ready to shove her between him and a wall if necessary. She thinks of other times he’s shoved her into walls, and then reminds herself to focus.

Downstairs, the rooms of their relatively new house are lit only by moonlight cascading through the windows, painting the comfy furniture and hardwood floors in tones of blue and gray. In the entrance to the great room, one picture frame lies on the edge of the rug, tumbled from its place on a nearby table. Felicity’s glad to see no sign of broken glass—it’s one of her favorites, him kissing the spot just beneath her ear, his eyes crinkled in a smile.

Oliver stalks quietly towards the room, peering around the corners, throwing knife in hand. She can hear her own bare feet padding across the wood floor, just behind his own, and when he stops abruptly she flattens against his back… and lingers there, feeling his measured breaths and taut muscles beneath her palms.

Then the scratching sound whizzes past behind her, and she whirls around just as Oliver’s arm sweeps her back against the wall—but she sees no large humanly shape with weapon in hand.

Instead, it’s a tiny shape with a fluffy tail scurrying around the molding at the base of the wall, hurling itself from one corner of the room to the other.

“Is that… a squirrel?” she asks, aloud, her voice shattering the tense silence. Her heart still pounds thickly in her ears.

Oliver has a confused expression on his face as he moves towards the other room, where the squirrel is disappearing around the corner. Felicity stays against the wall and breathes, unsure whether to laugh at the nearly naked Arrow hunting down a wild rodent with all the ferocity of prowling the streets.

Then something brushes over her feet and she screeches, leaping up mostly out of surprise, but Oliver’s footsteps thunder around the corner as the knife flashes at his side, his eyes darting around the room. “What is it?” he asks, as she practically throws herself on top of him. He carries her weight in one arm easily, her stomach bent over his shoulder, as she wraps herself around his neck.

“Kill it!” she shrieks, though she doesn’t really mean it. “It attacked me—it might be mechanized! Don’t laugh, there were these bees one time, I may not have told you this story because I was with, you know, anyway-”

“Felicity, it’s just a squirrel. You left the window with the broken screen open in the kitchen.” She can hear the calm smile returning to his voice, though he doesn’t put her down yet.

“Are you sure?”

“That our enemies haven’t found us and attacked with mechanical squirrels? Yes.”

“It could be the perfect plan.”

“It sounds like one of your plans.”

“I suggest a robot guard dog for the lair _one time_ …”

The squirrel’s frantic scramble through the house has led it back to the window, and they hear the scraping of the screen as it wiggles its way back out. It has discovered the larger predators who own this territory, though at the moment their most fearsome attack is gentle teasing.

Oliver still hasn’t released her as he crosses the room to close the window, and before she asks him to let her go, he’s pressing her up against the wall and shifting her until her legs are twined around his waist.

“The home security system I got has a lot of perks, huh?” she murmurs against his lips, feeling the roll of his hips against her own with a low moan caught in her throat.

“Satisfaction guaranteed,” he growls.

“It always is.”

The next picture to fall from the nearby table is not as lucky as the first, though it’s quickly replaced and set back on its perch.

All the knick knacks in their home are well aware of the precarious danger of sitting on flat, hip-level surfaces—in a way, the squirrel was a nice change of pace.

But it’s quickly back to the same old… rhythm of life in their new home.


	23. Ticket to Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver and Felicity enjoy some suburban entertainment… but Oliver finds himself distracted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You knew I had to do at least one more of these, right? I think this is at least part of why the Hoffmans assume kids aren’t far off…

She’s biting her lip, with an adorable little crease between her eyebrows, staring at the rows of booths while fidgeting at his side.

And it takes all of the discipline Oliver has cultivated not to reach out and drag her deeper into his arms.

He reminds himself of the children shrieking with laughter as they run past, of the elderly couples demurely holding hands on the nearby benches, of the sharp-eyed women in sweater sets and frowning men in polos surveying the crowd. He tells himself they are only a ten minute walk from their house, where there are walls and solid doors and a bed…

He should not have thought of a bed.

Because Felicity tilts her head to the side and makes a little, “hmm,” of indecision, and it sounds a little too close to some of her softer moans when he’s…

Oliver clenches his jaw, the hand around her waist gripping a little too tightly into the fabric of her dress against her hip, and her face swings up towards him, wide eyes blinking behind her glasses.

“Felicity, we can get more tickets,” he says, but she purses her lips and shakes her head. She is too fucking _cute_ , and he has had too much wine.

“No,” she says, voice a little sloppy but determined.

She’s had several cups of different wines here as well; it _is_ the Festival of Food and Wine. Or, at least, what this small suburb considers a festival to be—to him, it’s a row of canvas booths from the local restaurants and an awful local cover band, but this isn’t Starling City and he’s not Oliver _Queen_ here.

It’s why he loves it here, actually. But he could do with a little less off-key warbling from the singer on the makeshift stage.

“I’m going to choose _one_. I’ve already put on too much weight with all your baking—I mean, you _bake_ , I still can’t really believe it—not that I’m not enjoying it, because I am, too much,” she mutters, but he enjoys the curve of her hip beneath his palm just fine, and he might start to tell her so if it wouldn’t shatter what little self-control he has left.

“Then choose, please,” he says a little tightly. Because now she’s cocked one hip against his as she considers another booth, and his jeans may not provide the… identity concealment he needs for much longer.

“Why? Can’t wait to get home for another thrilling round of washing dishes and doing laundry?” she teases.

“I’ve got a few things on my to-do list for the evening,” he says, voice low, staring down at her with one eyebrow slightly cocked.

She smiles up at him, biting her bottom lip again, and she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Felicity,” he growls, helplessly drawn towards her like falling into the sun.

“I’ve decided—I’m getting the red velvet,” she says suddenly, twirling away so quickly her ponytail smacks him in the face as she skips over to the booth.

His hands seize into the empty grasp of air he’s left holding, and he has to pull back and reign in the taut frustration in his body when a neighbor woman passes by and says hello. He manages nothing more than a brief smile.

Then Felicity is bouncing back to him, her last food ticket left at the counter as she unwraps the dark red cupcake in her hands. They’ve already sampled pulled pork sandwiches and garlic pasta and tiny shrimp egg rolls, small portions from local restaurants displaying their wares, along with multiple cups of varied red wines from local vineyards. He had protested at first, not quite feeling Felicity’s restlessness to get out of the house, but he found himself enjoying the quiet, peaceful atmosphere. The people living normal lives, worrying about golf scores and curb appeal, where their biggest fear was too much rain overwhelming the sump pump or the price of gas going up.

“Happy?” he asks her, as she smiles up at him over the top of the cupcake’s white frosting, her eyes somehow still twinkling in the fading light of dusk.

Is she happy with the cupcake? That they came to the festival?

Is she happy here with him?

She nods, but she’s already halfway into the first bite, and when she pulls back there are smears of white frosting across her pink lips. He nearly groans, but then her tongue slides out to sweep slowly over her lips, clearing away the sugary mess with relish, and his breath hitches in his throat.

“Mmhmm,” she says, and he isn’t imagining the way the sound lingers in her mouth, low and taunting. Her eyes are no longer twinkling; they’re molten heat and daring temptation fixated on his own, as she parts her lips wide to take another sumptuous bite.

Her eyes go wide as his hands seize hold of her waist and haul her in against him. They both stumble back between the flaps of the nearest booths, giggling and gasping around each other’s wine-soaked breaths, frosting catching in the stubble across his chin, his hands grasping every inch of her he can find as hers dart beneath the hem of his t-shirt.

And that is why they are banned from the Ivy Town Festival of Food and Wine. 


	24. Who's the Boss? [E]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity brings being a boss home with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This chapter is very much rated 'EXPLICIT.'
> 
> I changed the rating on this fic because overall it really isn't a very 'E' collection, mostly just fluff--other than the rare E chapter... like this one. If anyone is bothered by that, please let me know. 
> 
> This piece is a bit longer and is inspired by episode 4x02.
> 
> As usual, I have no idea what I'm doing, so... enjoy? ;)

“Take off your shirt—I mean, if you want. Or not. I don’t want you to think I don’t like that shirt, it’s a really great shirt-”

“Felicity.”

“What? Oh God, I’m horrible at this already, aren’t I?”

“This was your idea,” he says with a gentle smile, standing in the middle of their loft.

“Well, I came home all bossy from work and you did that thing with your face and I…” Felicity fidgets with her hands in front of her waist, still wearing her stilettos and pencil skirt from work, briefcase left haphazardly beside the front door. Having planned this (and putting it on her schedule as her “6 o’clock meeting” sent a thrill through her each time Gerry reminded her) had been really hot, at first, but now it just felt kind of ridiculous.

He frowns. “What thing with my face?”

“You know, the thing where you have eyes and those lips and that jaw and—you’re doing it right now!”

“I’m sorry.” He does not sound sorry; the grin doesn’t help.

“I just… thought you might like it.” Her voice goes quieter. “That I might like it.”

Now he crosses the room to her, hands curling around her elbows to draw her closer, so that she’s looking up into those soft blue eyes. “I like anything we do together,” he says, quietly. “Do you still want to give this a try?”

She takes a breath and nods, biting her bottom lip.

Because she really does.

“Okay, then,” he says, and he lets her go to step back a few feet. Then he’s pulling his shirt off  with one hand, revealing the surging muscles beneath, and her teeth dig sharply into her lip.

The look he sends her, standing there bare to the waist, is pure, smug sex. “What would you like me to do next?”

She breathes deeply, savoring the flutter of butterflies she still gets every time she’s near shirtless Oliver—now that she can _touch_ him any time she wants, now that he can touch _her_. She twists her fingers together with the effort not to reach out for him.

“Um… pants, too. Off.” She points vaguely in the direction of his lower body, waiting for him to balk or show any sign of uncertainty—but he just pops the buttons on his jeans with what has to be an illegal amount of hotness, curling his large hands around the waistband as he pushes them down his thickly muscled thighs.

Then he’s standing there in just his boxers, kicking his jeans off one foot and on top of the heap of his shirt. She should tell him to take the boxers off, too, right? Would that be hot? Or too much too soon? Where is she going with this?

She never realized how exhausting being the boss would be.

He waits patiently, though she can see the question gathering in his eyes as she just stares blankly at him. It’s a reaction she’s sure he’s used to, but this isn’t exactly the first time she’s seen his body… or touched it… or kissed it…

“Okay, so, um, come here,” she says, and he’s standing just in front of her, chest barely an inch from her own. His lips are just barely curved into a smile as he looks down at her, but she’s a little too nervous to summon a smile in return. “Pick me up.”

Before she can blink, his hands are cupping just beneath her ass, lifting the tops of her thighs and her entire body with it up into his arms. Her knees automatically part around his waist, feet kicking up behind her, still wearing her shoes—

“Wait, wait, put me down,” she says, hands latching onto his shoulders, and with a small sigh he places her gently back onto her feet. “I think I’m going to take my shoes off. Is that okay? I know sometimes you like-”

“Felicity,” he says, in the tone of affectionate exasperation she’s come to love. “This is about what _you_ want.”

“Right.” She goes to unbuckle the thin strap around her ankle, and then a thought occurs to her… She can do this, right? “Take them off for me.”

She watches his face carefully for any discomfort, but he just kneels instantly before her, fingers sliding around the nearest ankle to reach for the clasp. Seeing the back of his head bowed forward, the broad curve of his back bent at her whim, she feels fluid heat rushing through her unexpectedly. She has complete trust that this man, scarred and strong and stubborn, will do anything she asks.

It’s a heady, powerful feeling, even though this moment isn’t that different from all the others—he rarely denies her anything. But something about… _this_ , about the exaggerated play of this scene, tingles across her skin with a safe but potent thrill.

His callused fingertips slide agonizingly slowly up the back of her leg to her knee, lifting her foot out of the loosened heel, his other hand tossing the shoe away once free. Then her bare foot comes down on the cool wood floor, her body tilted off balance until he lifts the other leg into his grasp to undo the next shoe. She can lean her weight into his hold if she needs to, into the firm grip of his hand around her ankle as he slides off the shoe, her pink painted toes resting on the top of his knee.

Part of her wants to tell him to give her a foot rub, which sounds really nice after a day in those heels—but she reminds herself to focus.

She expects him to stand, but Oliver stays on his knees, looking up at her with a glimmer of mischievous lust in his eyes. His hand tenses as it lingers on her ankle, grazing over the skin with a circular sweep of his thumb. The flutter of her dress hem around her knees and his particular angle is not lost on her, and she feels her heart quicken.

He’s waiting for another command… and she’s pretty sure which one he’s expecting.

But there’s something about this whole thing—right now, she doesn’t want soft and romantic and generous foreplay (of course, she loves that, Oliver is never anything but generous)—instead, she wants to seize hold of that slightly cold, slightly hard side of herself that being a boss requires, that she’s just learning how to embrace. Or, at least, her version of that.

“Get up,” she says, and something in her voice makes him blink, making her falter in return. But he sets her foot back on the floor and stands, rising up before her with his hands dutifully at his side. She can see the twitch of his thumb across his finger, though, in the tense moment of waiting once he’s standing.

“Pick me up again.” She reaches out to grab his shoulders as he sweeps down to take hold of her, having to bend a little further without her heels.

When she’s up with her arms around his neck, looking down into his face, his hands digging into her curves, she takes a moment to kiss him softly on the lips. She can’t help it—having him so close, the scent of his minty breath and woodsy aftershave, the earnest desire in those eyes, all for _her_ … She’s not sure if it punctures the steamy mood they’d been building, but his hold on her tightens and she hears the tiny pleased grunt in his throat as he sucks in her bottom lip. After a gentle nip against his upper lip, the scratch of stubble familiar against her chin, she pulls back.

“Take me to the bedroom,” she murmurs. He can say what he wants about the surrounding buildings and the type of glass, but she’s seen enough of telephoto lenses and footage enhancers that she’s still wary of the wall of windows.

He carries her down the stretch of the loft, and she can feel him hardening through the thin cloth of his boxers and the bunching fabric of her dress up around her waist as she adjusts herself against him. By the time they reach their room, his breath is husky against her neck, his eyes darkened as he looks up at her.

“Where would you like to go now?” he asks, voice deep.

“Oh, frak, I didn’t think this far—what do I want, what do I want?” she mutters to herself, as he holds her patiently (somewhat).

Positions flash through her head, as she glances to the bed and the dresser and into the master bath. Having him put her atop the dresser would be hot, but she always feels like she’s about to fall off and the sharp edge digs into her butt and one of these days they’re going to break the mirror and that will just be a hassle. Then there’s the bath, but they’d have to wait to fill the large tub (which at least is big enough for… aquatic activities, not like their house in Ivy Town where they couldn’t both fit and the water ended up all over the floor and she slipped on the ceramic and ended up sprawled in the ripped shower curtain).

“Felicity,” he growls, as she shifts uncertainly in his hands, providing a slick friction against her core that makes her suddenly not care what’s hot or bossy or not.

“Put me down—just here,” she says, a little hastily, and before he’s even finished lowering her to the ground she’s reaching for the zipper down her side. His hands have barely cleared the space around her before she’s dropping her dress to a pile around her feet.

Oliver stares down at her, swallowing, as she reaches back to unclasp her bra. Then she steps (well, half stumbles, forgetting her dress was there) onto the bed, flopping down with her legs dangling off the edge. Oliver’s eyes fixate on her breasts settling with the rest of her body into the plush comforter, and he moves instinctively to lean over her.

But she holds out one hand, the tip of her index finger hitting his Bratva tattoo and stopping him instantly.

“You stay standing,” she says, feeling a little thrill at the breath he expels, the way his face fixes into harsh lines that tells her he likes her idea… a lot. With a sigh through the smile she can’t help, she lifts her arms over her head as though she’s completely relaxed, and adds, “You can remove our undergarments now.”

He nearly tears off his boxers in the haste to shove them past the considerable… obstacle in their path, and then he’s reaching out to slip his fingertips beneath the lacy elastic of her panties.

“Undergarments—that’s a weird word, right?” she says to the ceiling, as he slides them past her knees. “It sounds classier than underwear, even though they both just slap the word ‘under’ in front. And it’s because they’re ‘under’ clothes, right, but what if you’re just wearing underwear and nothing else? Then it’s not under anything, it’s just…”

She trails off when he drops the item in question onto the floor and grabs hold of her knees, sliding her down to the edge of the bed. The sight of him standing there between her legs, naked and fierce, has her glad she kept her glasses on. But where normally he would be touching and kissing her by now, he just stands there, waiting.

“This isn’t like a no talking thing, right?” she asks uncertainly. “I mean, I didn’t tell you _not_ to talk, so you can talk—permission to speak granted or whatever, permanently, because I know I’m the chatty one but this quiet thing is kind of freaking me out-”

His hand slides in a comforting stroke down her thigh. “We can talk, if you want, or you can tell me what else you want.”

“I don’t _know_ ,” she nearly whines, feeling a little ridiculous after all this. “I don’t usually think this much. Just… just do what you normally do because you’re so good at it and I’m horrible at this.”

“No, you’re not,” he says, and he’s smiling gently. “I think you were on the right track before—just go with it. No matter what, I’m with you.”

As he speaks, his fingers caress her, and she squirms into his touch with a low moan. He knows exactly how to slide and swirl his rough fingertips through her center, like a cheat code to make her instantly ready. Her quick fingers may be able to hack into anything, but his can open her up with just a few masterful strokes.

She should tell him to do something daring, or something they’ve never done, or something she’s wanted that he hasn’t given her.

But there isn’t anything he hasn’t given her—he gives her everything, every time.

So all she wants is him.

“Okay, okay, just fuck me, now,” she cries out, as pleasure trembles through her blood, and with a harsh growl deep in his chest, he grabs her hips and slides into her.

She gasps, tilting her head back into the bed, her stomach stretching as he holds her hips in the air to get the right angle against him. Her thighs shudder and clench around his waist, heels jerking against his ass as he thrusts into her, starting out with a steady rhythm that’s already hurtling through her like a tidal wave.

“Faster,” she says with a shaky moan, helplessly chasing the storm gathering inside her, and when he immediately hastens to fulfill her command with a hissed, _“Fuck_ ,” she knows he’s close, too. She twists her hands into the comforter with a groan.

She stares at him through the haze of sensations pulsing through her body, panting out her breaths as her hips writhe in his firm grasp, his arms straining as he pulls her in to meet his thrusts again and again. He braces his knees against the bed to give himself more leverage, gasping out, “Felicity,” between his grunting breaths.

Then he curls forward in a thrust that strikes her clit against him with a bolt of lightning up her spine, and she nearly chokes on her sharp intake of breath, crying out, “Oh God, oh God, _Oliver_ ,” as she comes.

He falls forward onto his hands on either side of her for his last few desperate thrusts, but he’s already coming with those rasping groans that shiver through her like aftershocks, and then he slows inside of her.

“Oh my God,” she whimpers breathlessly, lying limp with her legs still dangling off the edge.

With a deeply masculine sigh of satisfaction, Oliver flops onto the bed beside her, one heavy arm settling over her waist. He tugs her up a few inches until they’re both securely on top and away from the risk of falling. He presses a scratchy kiss to her shoulder, his eyes closed, forehead damp with sweat along his hairline.

Felicity is still catching her breath, flushed chest heaving as his thumb strokes softly across her rib cage, when she turns to him with a smile.

“Now about your performance review… I think I might need some additional data. For quality assurance, just to be sure, you know. But maybe… after a power nap…”

He huffs an exhausted chuckle across her collarbone.

“Whatever you say, boss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also just wanted to let you guys know that I leave my shorter drabbles on Tumblr, mostly because they wouldn't necessarily fit in this collection or be worth your time. :) But if you're interested, you can check them out at 'jsevick.tumblr.com/tagged/my-drabbles'
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	25. Laser Tag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Arrow practices by playing laser tag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came from a prompt on Tumblr, thought I'd post it here too. :)

“What was the point of this again? Because I feel ridiculous,” Felicity says, fidgeting with the straps of the vest and waving around the large plastic gun. “And I’ve already fired a real gun, how is this better?”

Oliver sighs, gently taking hold of her hand and adjusting her grip, forefinger resting sideways across the trigger. “This is about navigating the environment and responding to an evolving situation spontaneously—but with accuracy.” He looks straight into her eyes, serious. “Felicity, I don’t want you anywhere near guns or any of this, but if you are, closing your eyes and aiming wildly is going to get you or someone else killed. This is a safe way to practice.”

“Practice getting swarmed by eleven-year-old boys, maybe—to be fair, also something I had no experience with,” she mutters, as the birthday party before them clears out of the dark space.

They stand in the lobby of the laser tag facility, strapped into clunky gear that makes body armor look sleek, which occasionally lights up with a swirl of electric colors across their backs and chests. Oliver keeps sending nervous looks at Thea, but her excitement seems to be just youth and the humor of the situation, not barely leashed bloodlust. Laurel  looks like she’s on Felicity’s wavelength, frowning down at the whirl of red lights flashing around her stomach. And Diggle stands stoically but with a slight eagerness in the quirk of his lips; Felicity has a feeling he’s been wanting to shoot Oliver for a while.

“Blue Team to the right, Red Team to the left,” the bored teenager says as they’re let into the space, and Oliver and Felicity make their way to the starting point on the right side of the room. It’s a dark, cavernous place, filled with strange, jagged shapes and sharp corners. Most of it is made out of foam or cheap drywall, but in the eerie darkness and flashing lights, it manages to look ominous enough.

Then the buzzer sounds, and supposedly they’re now hunting each other through the dark.

Oliver hovers at her side, a large presence somehow not diminished by the cheesiness of the plastic piled onto his body, signaling that they need to move out of the starting zone. Felicity turns to step around the corner when she feels a hard jerk on her vest yanking her back.

“Always stop and be aware of your surroundings,” he says, sounding a bit exasperated. “Listen and don’t lead with your whole body.”

“Right,” she whispers back. “Or I could just stumble around getting hit by cars.”

She hears his sigh as she turns back to the corner; she’s still not over how casually he treats his body sometimes. She could never take that body for granted.

But she does wait, back pressed to the wall like she’s seen in the movies, leaning closer to the corridor beyond and listening for footsteps—which she hears, faint but quick, moving over the sticky floor.

“There’s someone coming,” she says almost soundlessly.

Oliver’s up against the wall and beside her, nodding. “On the other side too,” he murmurs. “Try to shoot with as little of you exposed as possible—take the time to aim, it’s a second worth spending.”

So she peeks around the corner and sees the shadow moving swiftly along the wall, then jerks her head quickly back before she’s seen. With a breath, she develops a tiny algorithm in her mind, adjusting trajectory and velocity to map the path the shadow will take, and where it will be when Felicity whips her gun around the corner and fires three rapid shots—blasting with a scratchy “zoom” from the speaker in the gun.

“What the…?” Laurel says as she stumbles to a halt, staring down at the blinking lights and sad little “ _dun-dun-DUN_ ” playing from her chest. Only one of the shots hit, flashing in the upper corner of her shoulder, but it’s enough to put her out of the game.

“Yes!” Felicity says, pumping her fist in the air, and then she’s being yanked back behind the wall again.

“Celebrate _behind_ cover, please,” Oliver says in a strained voice.

Then he’s ducking around the other corner, firing quickly, though she hears the sounds of dodging and running rather than the song of another victory. “Come on,” he says with a gesture, moving around the corner in a crouch. She hurries after, panda flats shuffling over the floor, lingering behind his broad back when he abruptly stops and stands.

For a moment, there’s just an eerie quiet, and Felicity suddenly imagines the stress and fear if this were _real_ —with real bullets and real death around every corner. Her heart pounds a little harder and she wants to reach out and snag Oliver’s hand, like she wants to do every time she hears them fighting over the comms, her team out there in a hailstorm of gunfire.

Dig’s large arms appear around the corner up ahead, holding his gun and firing in quick succession in their direction. Oliver’s running towards cover, drawing Dig’s aim away from her, but she hears a noise and looks up.

Perched atop one of the partitions, Thea grins down at her, gun aimed. Felicity stumbles back, trying to get out of the way and look up so she might aim her gun—and then she’s falling, twisting over her own feet, hit by the invisible blast as the metallic death march rings from her vest.

“So this is death,” she mutters, lying sprawled on the ground.

It’s funny until she realizes that’s how quickly it could end, for any of them.

This isn’t a game anymore.

“Speedy!” Oliver shouts, though when he steps into view Felicity can see he’s “dead” as well. Dig is hovering behind him, looking smug. “We said no advanced maneuvers.”

“I’m pretty sure the point was to _win_ ,” Thea says, and yeah, there might be a bit of bloodlust in her eyes.

Oliver reaches down to lift Felicity back onto her feet, hand coming up to brush the back of her head and through her ponytail, checking for any damage from the fall. Only Felicity would get hurt playing laser tag with a bunch of superheroes.

“I’m fine—dead, but fine,” she says, gently swatting his hands away.

“No climbing on the walls,” says the bored voice over the intercom, and Thea leaps down to the floor, still gleaming with pride.

“Does that disqualify you? Am I brought back to life—funny how often that happens around us, isn’t it?” Felicity says, about to go on when she realizes it may not be that funny to the girl standing in front of her, very much _literally_ resurrected and dealing with the consequences.

“Dig still got Ollie, fair and square,” Thea says.

“Distracted in the field,” Dig adds, smirking at her and Oliver standing together, his hand still lingering on her elbow.

“So we win?” Laurel asks. “That was a great shot, though, Felicity.”

She shrugs. “I kept my eyes open this time, that helped. But I don’t think I want to be out in the field, ever.” _I don’t want any of you out there, either… but this is our life. I’ll do everything I can behind that computer to keep you safe._

“Fine by me,” Oliver says, as he wraps his arm around her waist and tugs her against his side.

“Losers are buying Big Belly Burger.” Thea marches off in triumph, as Laurel and Dig follow.

“Something tells me this is not how most shootouts end,” Felicity says, and Oliver smiles at her, though his eyes stay serious.

“I hope you never find out.”


	26. Hit and Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity finds out about a certain accident in an alley. [Missing scene from 4x02]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I don't normally post my dialogue-only drabbles here, but people on Tumblr seemed to enjoy this one so I thought I'd share it with my AO3 peeps! Hope you enjoy. :)

“Oh my God, I saw the news, is everyone okay? Are you okay? Wait, you called me, so I know you’re at least-”

“I’m okay. Thea and Jessica are fine, too.”

“Phew, that’s good, I wasn’t sure… Somehow I worry about you even more now, I didn’t think that was possible. I mean, look at you, you’re practically a brick wall, I should know because you’re so heavy-”

“Felicity.”

“Sorry, sorry. Do you need me to pull footage or something? Did you get the guys?”

“No. He got away.”

“There was just one?”

“Yes, out the alley behind the building, towards 5th street.”

“Okay, wait, I’m accessing it now, there—Oliver Queen, am I watching you get hit by a car!?”

“…I’m fine.”

“ _Fine_? The-the windshield, _Oliver_ , you… You have to tell me these things!”

“I called.”

“Were you going to tell me you got hit by a _car_?”

“…No. Brick wall, remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re _my_ brick wall, and I’m the only one who gets to hit it—you know what I mean!”

“I do.”

“Not now, I’m mad at you. Or the car. Or both. Or the really crappy day I was having _before_ I found out my boyfriend was hit by a car. So why _did_ you call?”

“I need to buy a truck.”

“…What?”

“We need the windshield for evidence.”

“So you want to buy the whole truck?”

“Seems easier to explain.”

“And I suppose you need my company funds to accomplish this?”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“You bet you will. With interest. Compounding interest, with dividends and projections—and you know what, I really need to learn this accounting stuff better before I start using it in sex metaphors.”

“I followed along just fine.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been recently scrambled—just buy your truck and get home so I can climb your stupid brick wall body and check you for any cracks or erosion or… you know, I don’t know enough about brick walls, either, and apparently I’m horrible at dirty talk. I’ll just stop.”

“Please don’t.”

 


	27. The Hand You're Dealt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity does not emerge from Double Down's attack unscathed. [Canon divergence for 4x03]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A canon divergence fic for 4x03–because I needed some hurt/comfort and I’m a monster who hurts my babies to get it–also I threw canon to the wind at the end in all sorts of ways, but oh well, this is just a bit of randomness to get more protective!Oliver. :)

In the cold, harsh echo of silence that follows, Felicity’s hands tremble and ache around the hot metal of the gun in her arms, the bones of her shoulder numb from bracing against the aftershocks.

But that is not the epicenter of the pain that makes her breath rattle and gasp in her throat.

The meta is gone as quickly as he arrived. Dust rises from the concrete walls riddled with bullet holes, steam billowing from a burst pipe, shattered glass from fallen lamps and cracked monitors strewn across the floor. Curtis’s limp body rests beside her feet.

Shakily, Felicity sets the gun down on the silver table in front of her, an unbidden wave of tears blurring her sight as she moves her arms and uncurls her tense fingers from the trigger, as she tries to stay upright on her spiked heels, as she takes slow, shuddering breaths…  

As she looks down at the playing card lodged in her side.

XXXXX

Oliver pauses on the top step, discussions of Digg’s research into HIVE freezing on his lips as his stomach lurches and his heart begins to race.

The room is destroyed, left in broken pieces by a whirlwind of violence, pockmarks of gunfire freckling the walls—and playing cards jutting from flat surfaces like throwing stars. Digg tenses at his side, surveying the damage with wide eyes.

“Felicity!” Oliver calls out, the leather of his gloves straining and cracking as he clenches his fists, boots hurtling over the last few steps. “ _Felicity!_ ”

“Over here,” her voice rises from across the room…

But it’s the faint tremor of her words that has his jaw clenching, his rapid steps crunching over shards of glass, his heart raging against the bounds of his rib cage.

She’s lying on the concrete floor, one arm outstretched towards the man lying beside her—whom Oliver doesn’t recognize, from the cloud of dark hair and tall frame, but he spares him no attention other than to confirm it isn’t that card-wielding freak (and that the man isn’t dead, just knocked out).

Because her other hand hovers over her side, quivering fingers slick with dark red blood, the playing card sticking out of her abdomen like a cruel joke.

Oliver falls to his knees at her side, as she tries to smile up at him, but he can see the trail of make-up and tears across her temples and sliding into her hair. His own breathing has suddenly become strained as he expels a breath of denial, eyes darting back and forth between her pain-clouded eyes and the growing puddle of blood darkening her already red dress to a deep maroon.

He almost doesn’t realize Digg had been behind him the whole way, until the man crouches down on the other side, assessing the wound with a sharp, focused gaze.

“I—I didn’t want to take it out,” Felicity says, as Digg tears gently at her dress to get a better look. All Oliver can see is the black gush of fresh blood over her skin, and he feels sick.

“John, talk to me,” Oliver nearly growls. A desperate, clawing energy pulses beneath his skin, until he wants to throw things and break bones beneath his fists. But he focuses on tearing off his gloves and stroking his hand across Felicity’s forehead, ignoring the cool sweat against her hairline to comb the loose wisps of her hair back into place. His other hand clutches her tiny palm within his own, his thumb brushing back and forth over her knuckles.

“Doesn’t look too deep,” Digg says, and his voice sounds steady, giving Oliver a tether back to sanity. Digg’s mouth even twists in half a smile as he looks down at Felicity and adds, “I told you all those crunches would be good for something.”

“Lately all my exercise has been sex,” Felicity blurts out.

Digg just shakes his head and rises to get the med kit across the room.

“It’s okay,” Felicity says softly, now looking at Oliver, and she lifts her free hand as though to stroke his cheek—before realizing it’s streaked with blood, and letting it fall back to her side. With a glimmer of mischief in her eyes, she says, “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a queen inside me.”

The card shuddering with every breath she takes _is_ a queen, painted face splattered with blood.

Oliver squeezes his eyes shut, hand twisting into the tangled strands of her ponytail, hunching forward to resist the urge to haul her into his arms. He can’t lose her, not _now_ , not _ever_.

Not when she is _everything_.

“Keep talking about sex and I’m outta here,” Digg says as he kneels back down beside her. Though they all know he won’t leave her side until she is whole again.

“Do you, um, maybe have one of those aspirins?” Felicity asks quietly, as her chest expands in a tiny stifled breath, and the movement raises a fresh trickle of blood around the card’s edges. The joking tone in her voice has faltered and cracked, and Oliver can see in the flicker of a frown across Digg’s face that he misses it, no matter what he says.

Oliver drags the backs of his fingers down her cheek, helplessly trying to comfort her, as Digg says, “Sure thing, Felicity.”

“I know it’s not an aspirin,” she says after swallowing one, Oliver holding up her head for the gulp of water with the white pill. “I mean, I was so loopy last time, I’m pretty sure I ordered ten anchovy pizzas and I _hate_ anchovies—and I slept it off for longer than I usually sleep in an entire week.” Her shoulders jerk with a small shrug, followed by a wince. “I guess I’m just not as strong as you guys.”

“Hey, _hey_ ,” Oliver says softly, cupping her jaw in his palm. She nestles into it with a little sound that makes his heart stutter. “You are the strongest person I know.”

“Well, _that’s_ a lie,” she says, and her eyelids have begun to flutter closed, the start of a chemical peace edging away her pain. “You knew Mirakuru soldiers and everything.”

“None of them could put me in my place like you do,” he murmurs.

“That’s not being strong, that’s just being _right_ ,” she says, foggily.

He lifts her hand to kiss her fingers, as she twitches one finger in his grasp to stoke across the stubble on his chin.

“Okay, Felicity, this is going to hurt,” Digg says, sharing a quick look with Oliver as his hand takes hold of the corner of the card, his other holding gauze at the ready.

Oliver cradles her face in his hand, thumb skimming over her cheekbone, trying to keep her from looking down at Digg’s hands and the blood soaking the torn fabric of her dress. She just stares back up at him, blue eyes fixed on his own through her glasses, hazy with pain and drugs but somehow locked into his very soul.

When Digg yanks the card from her skin, instantly replacing it with the gauze pressing hard over her ribs, Felicity shifts restlessly with a cry—that Oliver swallows against his lips. He wants to inhale her pain from her just as easily, but as he gently pulls her bottom lip between his own, her body settles into the stillness of his grasp and she makes a soft noise of distracted surrender. Aware that Digg is right there, preparing the few small stitches she’ll need, Oliver keeps the kiss light and shallow, just enough to keep her mind from the thread piercing her flesh.

Then Digg clears his throat, the bandage laid and taped across her stomach, most of the blood wiped off of her bare skin. Oliver pulls back, sees Felicity blinking through the confusion of drugs and the flush on her cheeks, feels her small painted nails dig into the hand she’s still holding as though it’s anchoring her to consciousness.

He didn’t even realize the man behind him had woken up, lifting his head from the ground to squint through his glasses at them, a trickle of blood slithering down the side of his face. When he sees Oliver looking at the wound on his head, he holds up his hand as if warding him off.

“I think I’ll just go to the hospital, thanks,” the man says, looking between Oliver and Felicity—and then blinking as though reconsidering. “Although, if this is some kind of head trauma hallucination, my husband probably wouldn’t mind…”

XXXXX

Felicity’s head lolls against Oliver’s solid shoulder, nuzzling into the sleeve of his soft green sweater. Her glasses are in a case in his back pocket, so when she squints open her eyes, everything beyond the stubbled jaw a few inches in front of her is a blur. But she can make out the colors and shapes of the loft as Oliver carries her through the door in his arms.

She shifts a little in waking, and hears Oliver murmur a gentle command to stay still, his voice rumbling in his chest beneath her. Her body is swamped in one of his sweatshirts left at the lair, and a pair of sweatpants rolled up to billow around her ankles. Beneath the swaddle of fabric, she can feel the pinch of the bandages wrapped taut around her ribs.

He settles her gently into the deep cushions of the couch, careful to lower her upper body slowly onto the throw pillows. As his hands move up to tug her ponytail holder out of her hair, she grumbles his name through the haze of muffled pain.

“Just rest,” he whispers, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“But the meta… the Magnetite,” she mutters. Maybe if she can explain, then they can search…

“Fe-li-ci-ty.” He stretches out the name like a deep breath, in the way she loves even when it’s filled with exasperation. “Sleep. We will find him.”

The last words come out a growl.

“I shot him,” she says with a sigh as she closes her eyes. She hears the pride in her own voice.

“I know,” Oliver says tightly. “Now it’s my turn.”

His fingers comb tenderly through her hair, his callused thumb scraping across her cheek, his breath heated against her skin as he presses his nose against her forehead and breathes her in. Felicity wants to reach out and grab hold of him, but her limbs are heavy and her eyes refuse to open. Sleep waits for her with a grasp almost as firm as his.

So she falls into it, safe in her vigilante’s hands.

And this time, the silence is soft and warm. 


	28. Fighting the Urge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity always thought she was a good student–but she’s never had a teacher as distracting as Oliver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a fun little idea that occurred to me, because apparently I have a thing for Oliver explaining fighting techniques–but for the record I know nothing about fighting, so I’m sure this is woefully inaccurate. :)

Under any other circumstances, Oliver’s firm grasp on her hips would fill her with liquid heat and melt her against him with a throaty sigh.

Now, Felicity huffs out a frustrated breath and glares at him.

“I  _know_ ,” she argues as his arms jerk her hips to the side, her feet stumbling to maintain her stance on the mats. “I got it.”

“You keep turning forward—opening yourself up to a hit.” He brushes the knuckles of his curled fist gently against her stomach for just a moment, before stepping back. “Okay, this time, keep that back foot  _back_ , staying to the side—makes you an even smaller target, which is already an advantage you should use.”

She doesn’t say anything, eyes narrowing as she shakes the loose strands of hair out of her eyes, and then he’s settling into his own stance. When he’d walked in bare-chested wearing just a pair of dark sweatpants, she’d raised her eyebrows—and he’d grinned, saying training with distraction was essential. She thought maybe, judging by the way his eyes lingered on her pink spandex top and snug yoga pants, she provided a bit of distraction in return.

Without warning, he lunges forward, arm swinging out towards her until she throws up the block he’d taught her. Of course, as soon as his fist grazes against her he stops and pulls back—she’s pretty sure bad guys won’t pay her the same courtesy. But they’re going slowly through the motions (slowly for _him_ , at least; it feels normal paced for her as she jumps and shuffles her feet to avoid his hands and tries to land strikes of her own), just working to build her muscle memory for some basic self-defense maneuvers.

“Use the block to make an opening,” he says, not even out of breath, as his hand lands against her forearm with a soft tap. “Heel of your hand, one motion.”

She’d been concentrating on blocking the hit, not on the next move which should be thrusting her hand up into his nose. And on the footwork, which always tripped her up when she wasn’t paying attention, leading to him repeating the same firm instructions as he catches her in a fall.  _And_  on keeping her hips twisted sideways, because even though he isn’t gloating, she doesn’t want to listen to him repeating the same commands with that patient only- _slightly_ -smug tone.

This is revenge for when she tried to teach him her basic database algorithm—okay, it  _hadn’t_  been fair to laugh at his questions and compare his technological prowess to her mother, she regrets that.

But in her haste to prove herself a fast learner (like she’s proudly claimed in every job interview, because it’s  _usually_  true), she overextends her lunge, not expecting him to twist so quickly aside (how does someone so big move so _fast_?), and she tumbles towards the mat.

Only the hard bar of Oliver’s arm suddenly around her waist keeps her from face-planting on the dark gray mat, so that she’s hanging over his forearm until he hauls her up against him.

Settled back on her feet, she pulls away, hands on her hips and breathing heavily.

“Again?” Oliver asks. The quirk of his lips is a restrained smirk, and he’s barely even sweaty, and she really wants to hit him.

Or maybe she just wants to hit  _that_.

“So when do I get to play with the stick?” she blurts out, and his eyebrows jerk up. “Oh, you know what I mean.” She gestures over at the rack of long wooden sticks against the wall.

Oliver grins. “Maybe later.” The low tone in his voice tells her that later she can play with any stick she wants. “I want to work on your hand-to-hand a little more.”

“Oh, hand-to-hand, sure,” she says, and she steps up until she’s inches from his chest. In an echo of his earlier move, she skims her knuckles against his bare stomach, reveling in the twitch of his muscles and the hitch in his breath. “Like this?”

He’s looking down at her, eyes dark, hands held loosely at his side as though restrained from grabbing her. When her hand slides innocently downwards, her curled pinky landing on the waistband of his sweatpants, he takes a breath, no longer so steady.

The lunge into his arms, leaping up to wrap herself around him, may not be a technique she would use on anyone else—but he tumbles back onto the mat (quite willingly, she’s sure, for even her whole weight couldn’t topple him without his eager participation in the fall) and lies defeated beneath her.

She takes her victory in deep, greedy kisses, in the shifting of her hips against his, in the revelation that workout clothes provide little hindrance to an exploration of the enemy’s body. His hands on her hips are welcome now, his fingertips digging into the stretchy fabric of her yoga pants until they threaten to slide down her skin.

The throat clearing jerks her head up from his—Digg stands across the lair with his arms over his chest, and her cheeks flush with a heat that has nothing to do with exercise or other Oliver-related exertions.

She winces in apology, sitting up and starting to stand, but Oliver’s hold on her hips just tightens.

“Give me a second,” he whispers, slightly breathless.  

“What was the  _one_  rule?” Digg calls out.

“No sex in the lair,” she and Oliver say in unison with guilty sighs.

“And when did we have that discussion?”

“…Yesterday,” she says in a small voice. “But we weren’t-”

“I’ve got eyes, Felicity,” Digg says flatly. “Eyes I am now going to have to remove.”

“Sorry,” she says, and hears Oliver grumble the same beneath her.

“That’s strike one—two more and that thing is gone.” He points at the salmon ladder, and Felicity gasps.

“What? No! That had nothing-”

“I know what to blame—for all of this,” he says, and as he turns to leave, she hears him muttering, “I shouldn’t know. I don’t want to know. But these fools keep letting me know.”

Felicity looks down at Oliver with a guilty glance. “Ready to get up?”

Oliver groans, but he’s smiling. “That seems to be the problem.”

As a concession to their teammates (one of whom is Oliver’s baby sister), the rule of the lair stands, and the salmon ladder remains intact.

But when the advanced locking mechanism on the doors always seems to jam when Oliver and Felicity are alone in the lair, and even Felicity can’t seem to fix it…

No one is surprised.


	29. The Ghosts We Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver shares a Halloween tradition with Felicity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, everyone! Just a little drabble inspired by a Halloween prompt--and yes, I know I always leave you hanging. ;)

With a shriek, Felicity buries her face in Oliver’s shoulder, jerking up the blanket that covers them both to hide her face. As the wet sounds and high-pitched screams continue, she digs her nose further into the sleeve of his dark gray henley and whimpers, “No, no, no, no…”

And hears him chuckle above her.

“How can you be laughing right now?” She lifts her head to glare at him, unable to escape the bloody gore in her peripheral vision. “There are _intestines_ on screen.”

“Those look nothing like intestines.”

She scrunches up her nose in a grimace. “Why am I dating someone who knows that?”

“Felicity, those are clearly sausage links,” Oliver says, still smiling as the final scream dies off in a choking gurgle. “I’m pretty sure this movie was made in someone’s backyard.”

“It’s still—“ She squeezes her eyes shut at a final shot of the mangled body lying sprawled over the ground. “—freaking me out. Why do you want to watch this?”

The movie has turned back to the other hapless teenagers wandering around in the dark, listening for vague sounds in the distance, startling at broken twigs and lurking cats. Felicity can actually bear to watch this part, though she keeps the edge of the blanket up around her nose, and squeaks when one of the other teenagers leaps out to prank his friends.

“It’s a Halloween tradition,” Oliver says, and then his eyes soften as he lifts his arm to wrap around her shoulders. “Come here.”

He tugs her into his chest until her legs are curled onto his lap, her small body tucked into his arms, and she keeps one hand around the blanket over her face while the other reaches out to snag a handful of his shirt and hold herself against him. The smell of his woodsy soap, the sounds of his steady breathing and occasional huff of surprise or amusement, and the solid firmness of the collarbone beneath her cheek as well as the muscular arm wound around her back go a long way towards making her feel better.

Until the killer arrives with a sudden thrust of his knife through one of the teenager’s faces, and Felicity jerks in Oliver’s grasp with a yelp. He strokes his hand up and down her side as she once again shoves her face into the muscles of his chest, feeling his heartbeat beneath her lips.

“But really, why do you like this? I would think…” _With all you’ve seen_ , she thinks but doesn’t say, because comparing any of Oliver’s experiences to a hokey horror movie about a serial killer is not what she wants him to think, for a second. And yet… she would think they all had enough of violence in their lives without adding it for entertainment.

“I don’t know if I _like_ it, but… I remember the first Halloween Tommy and I were allowed to watch a scary movie,” he says. “After we got back from trick-or-treating, with all our candy sorted into piles between us, my dad said it was okay even though my mom didn’t like it. It became something we did every year, and Thea would cry when we wouldn’t let her join us, and then we’d have Halloween parties in high school and put on a silly movie like this…”

“So the girls would be all over you?”

He smirks as his hand pats her on the thigh splayed over his lap. “Some things don’t change.”

But she can see in the fading of his smile that some things do.

Like the fact that they’re alone in the loft with enough ghosts between them to outdo any scary movie. For a moment, she thinks of another world, where they throw a big Halloween party with strings of orange pumpkin lights and spiked cider—and Tommy sits on the couch beside them, laughing at Felicity’s shrieking while Laurel rolls her eyes at all of them as Tommy wraps his arm around her shoulders.

So maybe this isn’t about watching teenagers being hacked up by a knife-wielding monster.

Maybe it’s about holding onto a thread of the teenager he once was… and the memories of the teenager who’s lost from all but these fading traditions.

Felicity can’t bring him back from the dead—but maybe, for now, she can keep some part of those traditions alive.

She can’t watch another minute of splattered red dye and horrible acting, though. So she shifts on Oliver’s lap, as his hands hover uncertainly to catch her as she climbs across him until she’s straddling his hips, braced against his shoulders.

“So… these girls at the parties… I imagine they needed some comforting,” she murmurs, sliding her hands around his neck as he stares up at her, the confusion in his face clearing slowly into an eager heat. “Someone strong to keep them safe and warm.”

“I did what I could.” His hands grip her waist, pulling her in against him as he tilts his head back to capture her lips.

“This is a tradition, too, then,” she gasps between heated breaths.

“ _This_ ,” he says, voice deep, as he pulls away and slides his thumb across her chin. “Just us, this is new. But I think it may be my new favorite tradition.”

Felicity almost mutters that if he thinks she’s going to watch these ridiculous movies every year, they’re about to add fighting to their tradition—but she’s quickly lost in his lips and hands and the rasp of his stubble beneath her fingertips and the coiling of his muscles beneath her hips.

He may pretend this is new, but she has no doubt what those parties and scary movies were really about…

She also has no doubt that this man is now hers, and she is reaping the benefits of the man he’s become. It’s a much more pleasant sort of reaping than the contents of _Reaper IV: Into the Woods_ playing across their TV screen in shaky cam and sprays of fake blood.

But they’re not watching the movie any more…

And the next screams echoing through the loft do not come from the TV. 


	30. The Scars Unseen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not all of Oliver’s scars can be seen–and some wars cannot be won. But Felicity never leaves her man behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m pretty sure Oliver Queen + nightmares is a fandom staple (as it should be, since we probably shouldn’t erase what he’s gone through or continues to struggle with)–so I thought I’d throw in my take.
> 
> Also, this *might* be my last drabble here for a while (though I always think that and then change my mind)--but I've got some longer fics I want to focus on for a bit. I thought it would be nice to 'end' it with "dreams." But I know a lot of people enjoy these drabbles (and I appreciate that so, so much)--so I will definitely be back. :)

It starts with the first summer storm.

The clouds gathered as they drove, and at first Felicity didn’t notice the tension gathering across Oliver’s shoulders, through his fist as he clenched the gear shift between them. When he was a bit quiet at dinner, as the rain splattered across the restaurant windows, she thought he was thinking of the city they’d left behind. Fearing that a question might unearth the first tendrils of regret, she had just blathered on for the both of them, not even noticing that he ate half of what he usually did. And as he pulled into a motel sooner than they’d planned, citing the slick roads and patter of rain across the thin top of the convertible, she said nothing. They spent the extra hours of the evening not on the road drowning in each other instead, and she thought maybe this was what he’d wanted all along.

But she wakes to a crack of thunder and the sillhouette of Oliver sitting on the edge of the bed, outlined in the flash of light through the window. Sighing and stretching out the pleasant soreness in her body, still adjusting to the frequent (and enthusiastic) use of different muscles, Felicity waits for him to move towards the bathroom, or perhaps climb back beneath the covers with her.

He stays completely still, until the next roar of thunder shudders against the windows, and she sees the flinch along his frame and the rigidity of his arms grasping the edge of the mattress in his fists.

“Oliver?” she asks softly, the sleep cleared from her eyes in a single blink, and she reaches out towards him but holds her fingertips back from brushing the bare skin of his back. The rough scars across his broad shoulders, the League’s brand still healing into clotted flesh, are smoothed beneath her gentle touch now that she can linger against him any time she wants—but smoothing the scars beneath his skin will require a touch she isn’t sure how to give.

“I’m fine, Felicity,” he replies without looking back at her, voice slightly gruff. “Go back to sleep.”

Knowing that he is at least awake (having researched enough to know not to touch someone with PTSD having a nightmare), she now lets her palm rest against the muscles between his shoulder blades. She feels the breath he releases beneath her fingertips.

Sitting up and letting the sheets fall to her waist, Felicity rolls towards him, sliding her hand up over his shoulder to find its way towards his heart. The beat beneath his tattoo is a quickened rhythm, his skin slick with cool sweat, and she feels her own heart leap in sympathy. He stays still as she presses herself against his back, her other arm curling around his waist to hold him tightly in her embrace, her chin resting on his shoulder as he takes a deep breath. The next rumble of thunder is quieter, and his only response is a tightening of his fingers into the seams of the mattress.

“You should have woken me,” she murmurs, though she instantly regrets the way it sounds like an admonishment. She quickly corrects herself, saying, “You can always wake me.”

He sighs and turns his head, so that the stubble of his jaw brushes against the tip of her nose. When he might have pulled away, she leans into it, nuzzling against his cheek.

“It’s nothing.” His deep voice is soft as the fading thunder, but the muscles of his abdomen are still tense and rigid beneath her arms. She can feel the quirk of a humorless smile in the muscles of his cheek shifting against her nose when he adds, “Just rain.”  

“It’s not nothing,” she says firmly with a kiss against his jaw. “Because… you are everything.”

She can only hope that he hears her, that he _understands_ —that she didn’t walk away from anything when they left, because every moment of her life since he walked into her office has been moving towards him. There is no “away” except away from him. She is strong enough to know her life is more than any man—and brave enough to know that she can give her entire life to _this_ man.

And she’ll hold his life carefully in her arms in return.

The slide of her bare chest against his back, the trail of kisses she brushes down his chin until he’s twisting back to catch her lips with his, the release of his hands from the fistfuls of sheets to come up and capture her hands against his chest… He’s quickly distracted from the storm, and she lets him disappear in her, to escape his own skin with the warm welcome of hers.

When they collapse back into the haphazard tangle of sheets, hearts beating fast and skin glistening with sweat for a much more pleasant reason, he falls asleep with his cheek resting against her collarbone and her nose buried in his hair. She stays awake, hands stroking up and down the parts of his back and shoulders she can reach, keeping watch over his dreams. Even in the resurgence of the storm just before dawn, he stays safe and sleeping in her arms.

But chasing away the monsters is not a single battle—it’s a war. And as the months go on, in foreign places around the world and in the quiet suburb they finally choose for their home, Felicity realizes this is a war without a clear end. There are nights she wakes to him shifting and muttering in his sleep, other times she doesn’t wake until he’s already left the bed to work out downstairs. There are nights where he falls back to sleep quickly, others where she wakes to keep him company with whispered words or heated touch. Some battles are triumphant and brief; others leave their scars in dark circles beneath their eyes and yawns throughout the day.

She told him she would always fight at his side—and she meant it.

He will never again fight this war alone.

Felicity worries coming back to the city and the Arrow might make things worse, but not as much as she fears. The new influx of responsibility and schedules and campaign meetings and late night adrenaline leaves them both tired to their bones, and trying to make time for themselves through all of that only leaches more of their sleep away. The few hours they manage are deep and uninterrupted, a snoring tangle of limbs where she’s not even sure when her skin ends and his begins. Maybe they even share their dreams, hazy and flitting visions of battles won and lost, of battles yet to be fought.

And when he wakes, she wakes with him, so attuned now that his first inhale of awareness is echoed with her own. Sometimes they just talk, her sprawled across his chest, her chin resting on her folded arms as she smiles down at him. Sometimes she just holds him, wrapping herself around his large frame as best she can, both of them laughing when she throws her short leg over his hip to try and gather more and more of him into her embrace.

She can’t end this. There’s no code to crack, no simple formula to unlock, no switch to press that will keep the nightmares at bay. She can share his pain as best she can, but she can’t erase it with the click of a button.

But she can be there with him. She can be the soldier at his side, never leaving him behind. She can protect him with the same ferocity he has always shown her enemies, even when the enemy is the past.

Because she has a weapon that the past cannot defeat.

She can be his future. 


	31. Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a random cheesy little nugget of fluff inspired by that hug in 4x05, y’all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!! I've been posting drabbles on Tumblr and decided just to go ahead and add them to this collection--for my AO3 peeps! :D Most are post-ep or spec fics, not all are canon-based, I'm just going to have fun with it and I hope you do too. :)

“So what was it like?” Felicity lifts her head from his bare shoulder, fingers trailing softly up and down his side, her body comfortably trapped beneath the weight of his arm. They lie on the bed, facing each other, limbs tangled up in each other and the rumpled sheets.

She had carefully peeled the gray t-shirt from his still slightly shaken form; her own shirt had not been treated so gently—it currently lies in a tattered pile across the room. Just another thing to toss into the box of clothing Oliver has ruined, fit only for rags.

“It looked like Nanda Parbat,” he replies after a moment, voice soft and quiet against her forehead. “But it felt… Not cold, but similar, that feeling when the wind cuts to the bone—except with a feeling of… nothing. I was too focused on getting Sara to really notice, but when I got back…”

His arms tighten around her, until every inch of her bare skin is pressed against an inch of his, and it’s so wonderfully warm that she melts into him.  

“What? You were overcome with the urge to celebrate life?” she says with a teasing smile, shifting against him and running her fingertips up his spine—because she never feels more alive than when her heart still beats loudly in her ears and her skin is slick with sweat and she’s got the coiled power of his body cradled in her arms.

He looks down at her, eyes serious, and says, “Yes.”

When she frowns at him in confusion at the shift in tone, he lifts a hand to smooth his thumb between her eyebrows, drawing his fingers down the side of her face and back through her tousled hair.

“I’ve felt that way before, that nothingness, and it didn’t frighten me,” he says solemnly, and then his face twists in a small smile. “But now… Felicity, I haven’t felt this  _alive_  in… too long. Maybe ever. Being with you, living with you—I’ve never wanted something so much. And I don’t want to lose it, I  _can’t_. You…  _are_  my life.”

She tips up her chin to capture his lips with her own, sharing their breaths as deeply as they’ve shared their souls. Her grip on him is a little tighter, his arms holding her closer until their heartbeats are a pounding echo—of life.

He pulls slowly away from the kiss, the satisfied hum in his throat shivering through her, and she’s ready to celebrate life again. But Oliver leans back and smiles.

“Constantine may also have suggested this as the best method of recovery from the other side.” Then he frowns. “Thank God I got him out of there before he could talk to Thea.”


	32. A Window in Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by that big window in their room and a comment on Tumblr about it being less creepy if it's Oliver from the future watching...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-canon, not really spec, just a random bit of slightly-angst?

“Okay, so we’re—WHOA, um, wow, I… I’m covering my eyes, not that I saw anything, but maybe we should-” Barry throws his hand over his eyes, over the mask, turning his entire body away from the edge of the rooftop.

“Barry, what are you…?” Oliver starts, voice rough from the strain of the last few days, not in the mood for Barry being… Barry (being  _anything_  like… her, right now).

But then he sees them.

Or rather… himself. And her.

He hadn’t thought of it in that moment—of course he hadn’t, with her finally talking to him again, and her soft skin warm beneath his wandering hands as he peels the black top up her spine, and the golden curtain of her hair falling around his face as he rises to meet her—but that window… In the dark, it’s lit up like a display, and what’s on display…

When he unhooks her bra and tosses it to the floor, as their still-clothed hips writhe against each other, even Oliver feels the need to look away. Not because it’s anything he hasn’t seen… or touched… or tasted… but because it’s so incredibly intimate. The fingers he combs through her hair to brush it back from her face, just so he can see her gasp with pleasure as he teases his other hand beneath the waistband of her jeans…

His own hands, now, curl into fists at his side. They’ve returned to instruments of nothing but death and violence—seeing them so tender and gentle… hurts.

Because right now, everything hurts.

Standing on this rooftop, a safer place to “land” or whatever Barry called it (saying he’d learned not to just show up where he might be seen, not at first), he stares down at a happiness he hadn’t ever thought was possible.

A happiness he will  _not_  let slip through his grasp.

“So, um, are you guys done yet or…?” Barry asks as he starts to turn, sees the glimpse of more and more bare flesh on the bed, and turns rapidly back around.

Oliver glares at him. “Done? We’ve barely been here a minute. Not everybody is that… fast, Barry.”

“Sorry, man, I don’t know,” Barry says hastily, fumbling over his words as he throws his hands up, stumbling backwards as Oliver stalks towards him.

But he’s just walking past him towards the roof door, having torn his eyes away from that glimpse of the life he’s here to save. They got here in time to warn them, of everything that’s coming, of everything he’ll  _lose_  if he doesn’t…

He takes a deep breath, and tells himself he made it. He can save her. He can save himself.

And then… curtains.


	33. Armor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A random little post-4x07 drabble of feels

She pulls the armor from his skin, piece by piece, slowly dragging down zippers and easing elastic bands around the edges of his limbs. She peels the tight black t-shirt gently up his bruised ribs, pulling it up off his arms as he winces at the movement.

When he’s bare to the waist, sitting on the stool with only his bruises and scars to hide him, she steps back amidst the scattered debris of his shed armor and stares. The lair is an empty cavern around them, the bright lights throwing the angry purple of his injuries into harsh relief. The others have gone home in the early morning to recover, Andy locked away down a dim hallway.

Oliver needed to change back into his street clothes, but the grimace as he moved betrayed him, and Felicity reached out to help strip him bare.

If there’s one thing she’s always known how to do, it’s taking down his armor.

For a long moment, she just looks at him, and he can’t read the expression on her face. It’s a calm sea hiding a storm within its depths, but is it a maelstrom of anger or sadness or pain? In the last few months, he’s learned to read the map of her face, leading him to the right response, whether it’s easing her stress or backing away from her crankiness. Best of all when he reads the glimmer in her eyes and the slight pursing of her lips and the quirk of her eyebrows like a trail to her desires.

Now it’s blank.

And then her bottom lip quivers slightly, and she steps forward, hands coming up to cradle his jaw in her gentle grasp. Without a word, she leans in, pressing a kiss to his forehead that trembles against his skin. He closes his eyes and feels the last vestiges of the fight drain out of him, safe in her hands. She drags kisses down his temple and cheekbone, her breath slightly ragged, as her hands slide forward until her arms are wrapped tightly around his neck. He presses his face into her shoulder and wonders who is comforting whom in that moment.

They both know why they do this, what it’s worth… and what it might cost them. Finding themselves in each other means being lost without the other. They have both declared, to themselves and to each other, that they will not let the fear stop them from living in the light of this moment. But that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t there.

“I’m okay,” he murmurs to her, his hands skating up her spine, until he drags her in against him. He stifles the grunt of pain at the crush of her body against his bruises; right now, her pain is the only thing he cares about.

“I know,” she whispers against his ear. “I just keep telling myself that it’s worth it. Right? Because all of this  _means_  something. Saving this city, helping John, fighting for  _hope_ … It’s worth everything.”

“It is,” he says, as she pulls back to look him in the eyes. He stares up at her, in awe of how he can feel  _this_  much, how he could even be capable of this much love. And from the shimmering intensity of her eyes, full of worry and devotion, she’s drowning in the same storm. He brushes his thumb across her cheek, just beneath the line of her glasses.

“Don’t lose hope,” he tells her.

A few weeks later, he will force himself to remember those words. He will imagine them in the soft tones of her voice as he holds her limp hand tightly in both of his, letting the words drown out the beeping machines and Donna’s sniffles.

He will keep fighting for hope.

And he will fight, with everything he has,  _for her_ , to keep from putting up that armor again.

So when she wakes, blinking sleepily as her face comes alive again, the map he’s memorized guiding him home… All she sees is him.


	34. Suspended

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x07-inspired drabble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another little 4x07 drabble that was originally written for a different fic that I’ve since abandoned; but I liked a few parts of it and thought it might fit, so why not? A little bit of the dialogue may be a stretch given her dress in the show differed from what I had written, but I decided to keep it. And yes, count me in among the obsessed with those suspenders, what can I say? ;)

Oliver snaps the suspenders into place over the crisp white shirt, reminded for a moment of the constrictions of another kind of suit, the buckles and straps in a dark green rather than sharp black. His fight in  _this_  suit, to bring hope to the city by standing in the light, has become a part of his crusade that he never expected.

But then, over the last couple years, he’s become something he never expected.

And the woman in the other room is to blame.

The sounds of make-up clattering against the counter, and the click and steam of the curling iron, and the undertones of muttering laced throughout are a favorite song he never thought he’d like. There’s something so domestic about listening to his girlfriend get ready in the other room—a steadiness and familiarity, a sense of  _home_ , that he wasn’t sure he’d ever have again.

“Okay, you have to be honest,” Felicity is saying from the other room, interrupting the warm spiral of his thoughts. He might suspect she’s talking to herself, if it weren’t accompanied by her approaching footsteps. “I’m going for respectable CEO-slash-girlfriend-of-the-mayor at a gala, not a bimbo or harlot or golddigger—and wow, there are a lot of negative words for women, humanity needs to work on that.”

He’s distracted from the last few words she mutters to herself, because she’s stepping into the room and for a moment his mind just goes blank.

Her golden curls are pinned up at the back of her head, emphasizing the graceful column of her bare neck, just above the beaded neckline and the long sheath of blue fabric clinging to her curves—somehow, it’s demure and tantalizing all at once, though he may be a tad bit biased since he finds her tempting in stained sweatshirts and cupcake-print yoga pants. When she moves towards him, the toes of her silver shoes peek from the bottom hem, the flash of spiky heels pooling a heat at the base of his spine as he imagines them staying strapped to her feet as he grips her ankles.

“So this is either really good or really bad,” she says, and he realizes he hasn’t said anything for several long moments.

“Good,” he says, clearing his throat when the word comes out a bit dry. “Um, very good.”

“But it’s not too much, right? It’s not too… flashy? Flaunt-y? Is that a word?”

“It’s perfect.” As he approaches her in front of the floor-length mirror, she gives him a glare that says how much she suspects his bias. He knows there have been a few rumors about just how she got the CEO job at Palmer Tech; he has no doubt that she will prove to them all that it’s everything  _behind_  her beautiful face that got her that job. “I mean it. Just right for a powerful CEO—and my girlfriend.”

She sighs, though she doesn’t argue, gazing into the mirror and running her fingers along the sparkling neckline. Oliver steps up behind her, hands sliding around her hips, feeling the smooth fabric against his palms and the warmth of her beneath the satin. When he presses a soft kiss against the spot just beneath her ear, she squirms against him—but the rest of her relaxes.

Then her eyes move to him in the mirror, and she spins around with a new gleam in her eyes.

“You look pretty good yourself, mister,” she says, her hands clenching around his suspenders. “You’ve got my vote.”

“I sort of assumed,” he murmurs as she draws him down towards her. “And I still have to put on the jacket.”

“Do you?” Her voice is a whisper, breath sweet and minty with her lips an inch from his own, but they both remember her carefully applied makeup at the last moment. So he just leans his forehead against hers, noses brushing between them, and they both take deep breaths.

Then they’re breaking apart, her fetching her clutch purse as he grabs his jacket from the back of the chair, because that really is the time—and for a mayoral candidate, being on time sort of has to be a priority.

As he walks behind her down the stairs of the loft, watching the luscious curves of her move beneath the fabric of her dress, he thinks maybe being unopposed relaxes the requirements of his timeliness a bit.

But Felicity absolutely refuses to show up late to one of her first major public appearances with tousled sex hair and a rumpled dress, no matter how much he flashes his suspenders at her. He wonders if perhaps he’s lost his touch, if they’ve lost their inexplicable allure to her.

Until she shoves the jacket off his shoulders as soon as they’re back in the loft and uses them to climb him like a rock wall.

So maybe some things don’t change.


	35. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry saves Felicity - but it comes at a cost (4x08-promo-inspired)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wouldn’t really call this a spec fic, since it’s not a prediction or even a wish, but it was inspired by the Flarrow trailer (and a *long ago* prompt by @praisedafangirls, who waited a long time for *this* which may prove why I don’t really take prompts). :)

It happens so quickly. Well, of course it does, everything Barry does happens quickly. Felicity still remembers how it wasn’t until the world had stopped spinning that she realized he had accidentally set her on fire.

Both times end with her shirt off—but she never thought the flames would be the more enjoyable experience.

The man burst into the loft, as Oliver dove for his bow and she scrambled back out of the way, letting the room full of heroes do their work. But she couldn’t get out of the path of the man’s knives fast enough…

Barry could, though. And he dove forward to jerk her out of their way, so the knives end up embedded in the wall instead of her chest. Then he’s diving back into the fray, and within minutes, the man is escaping from the heroes he sought to end, and they’re all taking stock of the room now covered in shattered glass and upturned furniture. But everyone’s okay.

And then Felicity goes to step forward from her place against the wall—and she can’t help the startled groan of pain that erupts from the agony in her chest.

Oliver spins abruptly towards her, saying her name in a worried tone as he crosses the room towards her in long, hurried strides—despite a few injuries of his own. She’s reaching down to clutch at the wrenching pain on her side, worsening with her gasp of breath and it makes her want to stop breathing.

“What happened? Are you hit?” he asks frantically, his hands skimming over her shoulders.

“No… I don’t know,” she groans. Even bending forward slightly into his touch hurts.

Barry is at her side in… well, in a flash, though he’s blocked out by Oliver’s arms holding her up. The others hover anxiously, unsure what’s going on.

Oliver’s hand brushes across her side, over the undamaged green fabric (that had brought the heated look she loves into his eyes earlier)—and when they press in against the side of her waist she jerks forward with a cry.

Barry winces, guilt twisting his face as he says, “I think I know what happened.” When Oliver stares at him, eyebrows going up in a silent demand for answers, Barry squirms even more and says, “I think, when I grabbed her, I bruised her ribs.”

“Cracked, more like it,” Diggle adds in a slightly angry tone, from her other side, and it’s a testament to Felicity’s pain that she hadn’t even noticed him approach.

“ _What_?” Oliver’s voice goes low rather than loud, and that is infinitely more frightening. Barry appears far more concerned than he did when the knife-wielding villain broke through the window.

“Felicity, I am so sorry,” Barry says earnestly.

“It’s okay—who needs ribs?” She tries to smile, but the breath she takes to speak slices through her. “Or breathing? You know, I think I might just stop doing that for a while.”

“Come on, let’s sit down,” Digg says, as he takes over from Oliver’s too taut grip to guide her gently towards the nearby bench. Caitlin has also hurried over to help.

When she sits with a strangled squawk of pain through her gritted teeth, she worries that Oliver might cause Barry actual physical harm. Caitlin slowly draws down the zipper on the back of her dress, something she hoped Oliver would do later while they were alone, not sitting in a room full of people (some of whom she’s just met) and wincing beneath Caitlin’s cold fingers prodding her ribs.

“Yep, two or three broken, I’d say,” Caitlin says, and Oliver actually  _growls_. Felicity’s little intake of breath at the unexpected sexiness of that sound reminds her with depressing clarity how much she cannot act on that.

Between Digg and Caitlin, they determine that there’s no more serious damage than that, and she doesn’t need to go to the hospital (having stronger painkillers already on hand helps with that). When they estimate the recovery at six weeks, and suggest very limited physical activity (with Digg giving Oliver a meaningful glance) for  _at least_  three, Barry disappears suddenly from the room. No one can fault his sense of self-preservation.

They give her a regimen of breathing exercises to prevent pneumonia, instructing her to watch for any shortness of breath and to apply an ice pack for twenty minutes of every hour for the first two days—or rather, they tell Oliver all of this, as she’s already starting to slip into the muddled bliss of Digg’s “aspirins.” (She starts solemnly informing Caitlin that this is so much worse than that time they fell off the bed and it knocked the wind out of her—“though I was pretty out of breath already, he does this thing with his-”—before Oliver puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes to silence her.) It makes getting upstairs to their bedroom easier, though Oliver’s careful to jostle her as little as possible in his arms.

The party is effectively dead, the others dispersing—though, to be fair, that was pretty much the case once the knife-wielding immortal literally crashed it. But if any group of people could have rebounded from that to go on partying, it was this group. Grumpy Oliver growling over injured Felicity and potentially fighting the speed-gifted meta-human among their guests? That’s their cue to leave.

Oliver helps her out of the dress with far more restraint and care than he might otherwise have shown, in the alternate universe where they managed one dinner party without an attack—where Barry didn’t have to save her life by battering her like a speeding car, and they had ended the night with Oliver bunching up the green dress around her waist as he thrust into her.

In  _this_ unfortunate universe, he hisses at the sight of the purple bruising spreading across her side, skimming his fingertips softly over the skin and raising goose bumps amidst the tender flesh.

“Three  _weeks_ ,” she whines, slurring a bit in the haze of the drugs. And this isn’t an overcautious suggestion that they might sneak around—even the hint of heavy breathing that comes over her at his touch (or even just a  _glance_ , she’s doomed) streaks through her with stabbing pain. “It hasn’t been three weeks for us… ever. Well I mean since we started. Before that it was… a  _lot_ of weeks. All the weeks. Lots of cold… frustrating… staring… weeks.”

He settles them into bed, piling the pillows between them as she sits between his legs, kept in an upright position because she can’t lie down without pain. But trading in their comfy mattress for the safe haven of his arms is no great sacrifice, especially as he nuzzles his nose against her temple and runs his fingers along her shoulders as he holds an ice pack gently against her side.

“I have something to distract you,” he murmurs, even as her eyes slide closed in the start of sleep. “I need you—and maybe Curtis and Palmer—to make me fast…

“Because I’m going to kill him.”


	36. Shades of Green [E]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That green dress from the 4x08 promo is pretty inspiring... [Explicit]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s the rare smut fic!! (And if everyone has not used this title already, I would be shocked.) Nothing but a little smutlet here, folks–a counterpart to yesterday’s fic (if the evening had gone differently). Because we were all thinking the same thing when we saw that dress in the 4x08 promo. ;)

Ever since she put it on, she knew. Possibly even since she saw it in the store, with its simple clean lines and knee-length hem and little sleeves. But of course, none of that was why she bought it.

She trusted Oliver not to snoop in her side of the closet, though she left it in the plastic garment bag just in case. Really, she felt a bit ridiculous, because it was just a dress—and she was lucky enough to have found a man who could look at her with the same heated gaze whether she was in sweatpants or a negligee (okay, maybe the second got a  _little_  more attention; but the first had still prompted a particularly memorable session over the back of the couch—though that might have been because she’d said she loved having him behind her when she’d  _meant_ she loved the way he had her back.)

Even so, it really is just a dress, and so when she gets home from work a bit late and Thea’s already there and she remembers how she hasn’t gotten the dry cleaning done in a while—she puts on the one clean dress nice enough for a dinner party with superheroes. The little flicker of anticipation in her stomach when she pauses in front of the mirror is just silliness.  

But when she comes down the stairs, and Oliver looks over from the kitchen counter where he’s pouring drinks… he freezes. Just for a moment, nothing the others would even notice as they mingle through the loft—but she sees the way his eyes darken and his face tenses and his hands clench tighter around the bottle in his hand. Then he’s looking away, and Barry is introducing her to the new faces, and the moment passes.

She still spends the evening with her stomach twisting in a swirling heat, and Oliver’s large hand resting in the small of her back at every chance, occasionally pulling at the fabric with a barely restrained tension in his grip. Every glance between them shivers down her spine, as she catches him watching her across the room with his jaw tight and his eyes hot. It’s a slow, quiet foreplay that even the frequent sips of her drink and the ongoing chatter of Cisco and the others can’t cool.

Of course, the immortal that bursts through their window goes a long way towards killing the mood. She supposes she should just be grateful that’s all he kills, but he still leaves Oliver wincing from a wound across his arm and the livelihood of the party is severely diminished. Barry’s super speed helps to clean up the shards of glass across their floor and put up the plastic sheeting they’ve started keeping on hand, but by the time everyone has recovered and dispersed, she’s nearly forgotten the thick, heady atmosphere of before.

_Nearly_. Because as she’s piling dishes in the sink and considering kicking off the heels that are starting to pinch her toes, Oliver walks over from the front door he just closed behind Thea.

And by the look in his eyes, he’s forgotten nothing.

Silently, he steps up behind her, reaching up to massage her shoulders as she rinses the last plate. Unable to help herself, Felicity moans and lets her head fall back, dropping the plate into the drying rack with a little too much force. Oliver presses a kiss to the side of her neck, the scrape of his stubble tingling across her skin.

“Are you—are you all right?” she asks, thinking of his injuries from the fight, as his hands leave her shoulders to slide down her sides, teasing along the sides of her breasts as his fingers smooth along the fabric.

The dark green fabric.

“No,” he growls, and she squirms back against him at the guttural sound, feeling the growing hardness of him against her ass. “Because I’ve been able to think of nothing but being inside you since you walked out in that dress.”

He spins her rapidly around, his hands fisting in the fabric of the skirt as he backs her against the counter where it’s been cleared, his lips swallowing any teasing quip (or, more likely, unnecessary ramble) she might have made. To anyone else, this dress would be perfectly demure, with its high neckline and hem around her knees, not a hint of cleavage or bare skin to be found.

But it’s  _his_  color, one he owns now more than ever. She might worry about the statement of declaring herself as belonging to him, if she didn’t think it declared him as belonging to her just as much.

“You can’t even see the best part,” she murmurs as she pulls away, breath coming in pants, as his lips skim across her cheek instead. “I’m not wearing underwear…”

Oliver expels a breath, head lifting back as his hips jerk against her helplessly, and somewhere in the agonized syllables muttered beneath that breath is her name—and a handful of Russian profanities. The hands at her hips are hastily pulling up the fabric of her skirt until it’s bunched above her waist and his fingers are searing against her bare skin as they both groan. She’s already writhing against him, knees parted around the thigh pressing her to the counter, the wet slickness of her core sliding against the fabric of his pants with a rasp that curls her toes inside the heels she still hasn’t kicked off.

“ _God,_ Felicity,” he grunts, and he’s lifting her up onto the edge of the counter so that the hard edge of his zipper and the even harder line of what’s behind it aligns perfectly with her clit, making her cry out when he thrusts against her.

His hands keep their grip on handfuls of her skirt held up around her waist, as her thighs part around her hips to hold herself in place against the counter. Strapped around her ankles, her high heels cling to her feet as they hover in the air, her knees gripping the sides of his chest. She’s scrambling her hands between them, tearing at the button on his pants and fingers digging for the zipper; their foreheads rest against one another as she looks down to concentrate, heavy breaths mingling in the space between them.

Then he’s free of the confinement, his eyes fluttering closed in relief and pleasure as she strokes him, but he’s already crowding in close and more than ready. One of his hand slips around to her lower back, his palm flat against her spine just beneath the folds of her dress as she leans back into his steady grasp.

“Oliver, just…  _please_ …” she whimpers, because she feels like they’ve been playing with each other for  _hours_ , his every gaze a pulsing touch cutting through that solid green dress to sear across her skin.

He slides into her unbearably slowly, until she’s wriggling her hips against him desperately, seeking more as her head falls back and she groans deeply at the sensation of fullness within her. Oliver pauses for a moment once he’s fully inside, leaning forward to rest his forehead against her shoulder. With a soft kiss against the neckline of her dress, he catches her gaze and says softly, “I love you.”

Any reply she might have made is lost in a shaky moan as he surges against her, beginning to thrust in a shockingly rough, stuttering rhythm against her. His piercing eyes are locked on hers the entire time, waiting for any sign that it’s too much, but she’s just shuddering under his touch and trying to stifle the gasping cries growing louder by the moment. That and the slap of his skin against hers echo through the otherwise silent loft, but she listens to his jagged, grunting breaths and savors the desperation in the sound.

He doesn’t let go of the material at her waist, using that to haul her in against him with every thrust, so that it’s her trembling grip on the edge of the counter that keeps them planted there. Her sweat-slick palms slide against the granite, and she might feel the solid cold beneath her ass if she could feel anything outside the pounding pleasure streaking through her from her core.

“Oh God, oh God,” she yells, head falling back, though she’s not sure if the words come out as distinct syllables through the choked gasps and panting moans. There’s something about him utterly losing himself in her that has her climbing towards her climax in ragged, leaping bounds that she can’t hold back.

Oliver’s thrusts grow more frantic as he chases his own climax, sensing her on the edge as she clings helplessly to his broad shoulders, still in the sleeves of his gray shirt. With a noiseless shout that blanks out all sound and thought in her head, she comes suddenly, barely feeling him following a few second after with a growled, “Fuck!  _Felicity_ …”

He slowly releases her dress from his grip, leaning forward onto his palms flat on the counter—as she continues to flutter around him and eases back into her own body with a languid heat. Her quivering thighs slide against his waist with the pants slipping down around his knees, and in between the catching of their breaths, they share a chuckle at the way that spiraled so quickly.

“If I didn’t say it earlier, I really like this dress,” he says, voice low and soft, eyes warm in the afterglow.

“Well, that’s good,” she says with a sigh. “Because I definitely can’t take it back  _now_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all for the backlog for now, folks--I think I'll probably keep up with more drabbles now but I'm not sure.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!! :)


	37. Homemade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Olicity Thanksgiving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate it!! I wrote this a couple days early because I’m not sure what my writing schedule will be like the next few days, and I’m too impatient to wait to post it. :) I hope you enjoy–and I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving!

“I can help with  _something_ ,” she says with a little pout, hovering around him in the kitchen. The counters are covered in ingredients and dishes in various states of preparedness, cutting boards and measuring cups, pots on the burners and pans waiting to go into the dual ovens.

And Oliver, standing in the middle of all of it, sleeves rolled up as he chops apples for the salad with rapid and assured strokes, calm and collected as always.

It is equal parts infuriating and hot, the latter making it that much more the former, as Felicity looks around at the chaos and wonders how all of this becomes edible and delicious food. But she knows in Oliver’s hands, it will… His hands are magic.

Her own hands can turn any computer into a whimpering servant awaiting her command—but raw meat and unwashed vegetables and cups of brown sugar and flour? Somehow those remain stubbornly immune to the power of her talented fingers and admittedly impressive mind, and she cannot figure out why. She can hack the FBI database without leaving a trail—but she can’t evenly mash a potato? No… she  _will_  conquer this.

“It’s fine, Felicity,” Oliver says, scraping the perfectly even chunks of apple into the bowl of lettuce. “It’s almost done—I’ve got it.”

“I know you’ve got it, but…” She looks around at the various dishes—the sweet potatoes and green beans, the mashed potatoes and cornbread stuffing, the roasted carrots and pumpkin pie, and the glistening turkey cooling on the carving board—and finds herself suddenly overwhelmed with a mess of different feelings. She didn’t have a Thanksgiving dinner like this growing up, one that wasn’t a discount special at the cocktail lounge; but it still overwhelms her with a feeling of home and family—and him. Always him.

She puts a hand on his arm, stilling it where it stirs the gravy on the stove. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

When he looks at her with a smile, the warmth in his eyes heats her down to her chilled toes, as he leans down to press a simple kiss against her lips. She can’t help the way she pushes up to deepen it, the way the intimate warmth spirals quickly into searing heat. He drops the spoon onto the counter with a splatter and winds his arms around her waist. He tastes like the white wine he poured over the turkey, and she can smell the cinnamon from the sweet potatoes on his fingertips when he lifts a hand to brush across her cheek.

But the sizzling of the gravy beginning to overheat, and the ding of the oven signaling the batch of buttermilk rolls are done, tears his lips from hers as he pulls away with a sigh. Lingering for one moment with his forehead against hers, Oliver closes his eyes and looks more peaceful than she’s seen him in weeks. It’s almost like being back in Ivy Town, where she would roll over in bed every morning and see the content smile cross his face as he woke and saw her beside him. She hadn’t even realized how much she missed that, being back in Star City and resuming the lives they’ve chosen.

She doesn’t regret the decision to come back… but she feels a profound relief that they could bring some of that easy happiness back with them.

Then he’s back into the focused mode of a chef, stirring the gravy back to a simmer while turning off the oven timer with his other hand. And Felicity’s back to feeling like a useless lump getting in the way.

He must notice the little frown on her face because he stifles a smile and kisses her cheek brusquely as he reaches past her for the oven mitt. “Okay, you can help with the cranberry sauce.”

“Ooh, yes, I can do that—cranberry sauce… so, cranberries—where are they?” She whips her head around, searching through the mess of open bags of flour and discarded cans of pumpkin puree. “Is this like a mashing situation because I’ll do better than with the potatoes, I promise; I’m pretty sure those potatoes just grew lumpy like that.”

“Actually, I made the fresh cranberry sauce yesterday,” he says with a wince. “But John said he likes the canned, so I picked some up.”

“Okay… so I just add water or something?”

His face twists with even more guilt. “You just have to open the can and put it on a serving dish.”

“What?” She gapes at him. “You’re giving me the job of being a glorified  _can opener_?”

“You can also pick the plate.”

If the others at dinner find it strange that the can-shaped lump of cranberry jelly is sitting on an ornate, far-too-large crystal dish in the center of the table, they say nothing. They also don’t comment on the bandage around Felicity’s finger, once she responds to Thea’s innocent concern and Oliver’s cough with a sharp glare and a hint of her loud voice.

But they’re quickly distracted by the piles of delicious food, the warm glow of the fireplace, and the increasingly sleepy laughter as they gorge on turkey. Sitting around the dining table, lifting glasses of wine to the family they’ve made here, they spend one evening like normal people. Felicity holds Oliver’s hand under the table, leaning her head against his broad, solid shoulder with a happy sigh, feeling his thumb brush across her knuckles as the others finish up the last of the pie and the homemade whipped cream. It feels like home.

And then there’s a rash of alerts on her phone and they’re struggling to fit into their suddenly-too-tight leather suits and she’s nodding off at her workstation while trying to upload satellite schematics… because they’ve never been normal—and that feels like home, too.

That’s how they made this family, after all.

Felicity’s never been more grateful.


	38. Take It Off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver fights a clothes-melting meta. (AKA total silliness.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a TOTAL crack fic–seriously, irredeemable and nonsensical ridiculousness. Inspired by a conversation with Bre in which we asked the important questions, like: “Why isn’t the Green Arrow suit just a loincloth and a hood?” and “Why can’t he fight a clothes-melting meta?” And here we are. This is why we can’t have nice things… ;P

The first time he returns from a fight with the meta, Felicity has to throw both hands over her mouth to hold back the laughter she nearly chokes on—while trying to appear concerned. Okay, she  _is_ concerned, because the meta landed several blows with his form of heat vision and then escaped, leaving her team to crawl back to the lair in defeat. Oliver took most of those blows himself.

They just had an… unusual effect.

“Are you okay?” she asks, the words punctuated with little puffs of restrained laughter, and he just glares at her.

The effectiveness of the glare is somewhat diminished by the state of him—his leather suit hanging in shredded tatters from the bared skin of his torso, revealing vast expanses of densely muscled flesh and the jagged scars crossing the solid lines of his body. His pants are mostly intact, other than the pant leg missing from below his left knee.

Despite looking like he’d barely escaped from a bout with a lion’s claws, the flesh beneath is whole and unmarred (well, it’s not any  _more_  marred than it already was).

He stomps off to the changing area as she calls out after him, “I’ll have Cisco-” And then the door is slamming shut.

She and the others wait about one second before bursting into laughter.

XXXXX

The second time they face the meta, Oliver’s forced to wear street clothes and his motorcycle helmet until the new suit can be made. They confront the man while he’s trying to rob the bank in the dead of night. His “heat vision” is carving through the vault when the team reaches him—and then it turns on them, stripping away the layers of Oliver’s leather jacket in a flash of tanned muscle. For a moment, he just stands there, bewildered (as Felicity watches anxiously—and yeah, okay,  _attentively_ —from the security feed).

The others attempt to leap into the fray, but the meta’s vision disintegrates their weapons from their hands, baring strips of skin through their outfits as they find themselves dodging the blasts. As the meta fires back with his other weapons, they’re forced into a retreat, lost for strategy.

And Oliver stands in the middle of the bank lobby, bare-chested and still in his motorcycle helmet, the muscles in his arms bulging as his hands curl into fists at his side.

Felicity discreetly saves the security footage in one of her hidden personal files.

XXXXX

“It appears the blasts disintegrate any manmade material but have no effect upon animated biological tissue,” Curtis says, examining the remains of their outfits. “Which is a good thing, I mean, since he can’t cause any lasting personal harm.”

“But we can’t use any of our weapons on him,” Laurel points out.

“And any attempt at hand-to-hand combat leaves us… exposed,” Diggle adds.

“I’ll look into something wearable that might resist the effect.” Curtis’ eyes dart over to where the Green Arrow leans against the railing, arms crossed—and then he glances at Felicity, voice dropping a little lower as he adds, “I may need to examine any security footage you have to be, um, thorough.”

She slips him the disk when the others aren’t looking.

XXXXX

Even without a strategy in place, they can’t just let the meta run wild. The man seems to be using his powers to rob banks and strip security guards—and Oliver, every chance he gets.

And… Felicity may not be the best at helping him avoid those chances.

It’s not that she wants to put Oliver in any danger. On a combat level, the meta isn’t really that much of a threat to him—just to his wardrobe.

So her focus may be a little… off.

“God _dammit_ , Felicity!” Oliver shouts in frustration, ducking back around the corner and clutching the  remaining scraps of his pants over his crotch. Felicity leans in closer to the monitor, mesmerized by the strip of bare skin along his hip and the dent beside his hipbone providing a clear arrow towards…

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, when he growls again into her earpiece. “The schematics must be wrong—I didn’t know he’d be right around the corner… by the security cameras… Um, maybe you should turn around so I can check for injuries?”

He mutters something she can’t quite make out, and then the meta is hurrying off into the distance, and for the moment, the fight is over.

It’s not like she can’t see all of him whenever she wants—but watching his muscles ripple across his back as he lunges forward in a punch or stomp kicks the meta away is… distracting. She’s actually amazed the meta doesn’t just surrender in raw appreciation.

But he doesn’t.

[They call the meta “Skinner.” She voted for “Magic Mike.”]

XXXXX

“What is this?” Oliver says testily, holding up the silky square of dark green fabric.

“It’s a polymer composite that mimics the properties of-” Curtis starts.

“But this is all of it.” The fabric slips over his fingers, barely the size of a placemat, with a few green strings sewn to the edges.

“Um, well, yes—the material is very rare and expensive to produce, so…”

“How am I supposed to wear this?”

“It’s, a, um…”

“Oh my God, it’s a loincloth,” Thea says suddenly, folding over as she cackles. Diggle’s face is twitching violently as he tries to maintain a serious expression.

“What?” Oliver says, the Green Arrow mask he’s still wearing around Curtis making his expression even more foreboding.

“You could always fight naked,” Felicity suggests. It’s not that Oliver hasn’t considered it—but he’s always caught off-guard and distracted, as the meta gets away.

With a growl, he bunches the scrap of fabric in his hand and stalks off towards the changing area.

“I’d definitely like to see the footage if you get any—purely for scientific verification, of course,” Curtis says under his breath to Felicity.

“Oh, yeah, sure—I’m thinking of hacking into a federal satellite so I don’t miss a second of this.”

XXXXX

He wears the thing beneath his clothes, hoping that he won’t need it—but of course, as he nears Skinner, the clothes begin to melt away under the meta’s gaze. This time, though, Oliver doesn’t need to hesitate as closes in, the loincloth providing its protection as promised so that the wide-eyed security guard clutching his own slivers of clothing doesn’t get an eyeful.

(Felicity assured Oliver that anyone seeing him would be nothing but envious—that said, a little voice in her head would prefer for some of his secrets to be just for her.)

Able to focus, Oliver takes down Skinner easily, standing over the unconscious meta with his bare chest heaving, the loincloth fluttering over the remains of the pant legs that fell around his ankles, his hood hanging over his head with the shredded ends scattered over his shoulders.

He doesn’t stick around to take the credit.

XXXXX

Later that night, after the meta is safely transferred to STAR Labs, Felicity and Oliver return to their loft where he doesn’t want to talk about it. (She forced him not to throw out the loincloth; it’s expensive material, and could be useful someday—she doesn’t add that her first thought is its potential for a few fantasies of hers, because he’s in a bit of a mood.)

But as they get ready for bed, she says, “You know, you and the meta have one thing in common.”

He sits on the edge of the mattress, eyebrows raised as he waits for her to clarify, as he knows she will.

Felicity tugs her t-shirt over her head, revealing all her bare skin underneath. Oliver’s eyes immediately darken, sweeping down her body with a trail of heat that curls her toes.

She smiles as he reaches out to pull her in against him.

“You, too, can remove my clothes with just a look.”


	39. 4x08 Fix-It Fic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My take on what should have happened as the episode ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn't even think of a title for this one, really--it's exactly what it says on the tin. 
> 
> Also, I realized later he didn't say "It's nothing," he said "It doesn't matter, it's over." Ah, well, the perils of writing reactionary fic. :)
> 
> I've had a LOT of thoughts on this storyline, won't get into them now--feel free to check out my Tumblr if you're curious. For now, I just wanted to process it and give my poor shipper heart a little imaginary solace.

“Go up to bed, I’ll clean up,” he’d said, after lifting his head from the warmth of her chest and smiling up at her. She’d wanted to argue, with the _long_ day they’d both had, but his voice was soft and insistent and there had been something in his eyes she couldn’t quite place. So she nodded through a yawn she couldn’t quite stifle and turned away.

Now she sits on the edge of the bed in her pajamas, listening to the tinkle of shards of glass being swept across the floor, and thinks about what he’d said.

_It’s nothing_. She’s heard it before, after bullet holes and nightmares in the middle of the night—it’s how he sees his pain.

That thought has her up and padding down the stairs in her slippers, as Oliver looks up from the pile of glass on the floor to frown at her in confusion. She’s across the room before he can even warn her about the debris still scattered between them.

“It’s not nothing, it’s something,” she says, calmly, even though her stomach is starting to twist. She gave her best “team” speech earlier, after _knowing_ something was bothering him, and he’d told her it was nothing.

She knows this Oliver—this is the Oliver who takes on R’as al Ghul alone, the Oliver who joins the League undercover without telling them, the Oliver who plans to die to save them. This is the Oliver who self-destructs, because then the only thing he destroys is himself.

But he’s not just himself anymore; finding themselves in each other meant losing the selves that stood alone.

“Felicity…”

“Just tell me, Oliver,” she says, stepping forward—until he grabs her arms suddenly. But he’s just halting her before she can step into the pile of glass, pivoting her around until they’re both clear of it. When he stops, she reaches up to grab hold of his hands before he can pull them away. “If it really is nothing, then you can still tell me—I tell you nothing all the time. I told you about the time I thought Harold ate my yogurt when really it was just turned around in the fridge—I mean, okay, would it have been so hard to turn it back around when they jostled—look, I can’t get into that again.”

He smiles, even though his eyes are still guarded.

“The _point_ is, we’re supposed to tell each other things, _everything_.” She takes a deep breath. “And if it’s _not_ nothing, then… we’ll handle it. _Together_. You don’t have to do anything alone ever again—that’s what this _is_. I promise we’ll work through it.”

She can see the struggle in his face, the instincts warring within him—it scares her, because whatever this is it’s scaring _him_ —but she also knows that dating Oliver Queen is not like dating anyone else. And while that’s the most wonderful thing about him, it also means sometimes navigating normal couple problems means steering through a sea of scars.

“I don’t want to lose you,” he says, quietly, eyebrows drawn together.

“You won’t.” She’s still holding his hands against her shoulders; she sweeps her thumb across the back of his hand.

“You don’t know-”

“Unless you’re leaving me for my mother, I am _in_ this, Oliver Queen. All in. Can’t get rid of me now.”

He expels a breath as his eyes turn warm as the heat of his arms wrapped around her—and if she ever questions whether Oliver loves her, she just has to remember this look. “I… I want to tell you, I _do_ —but it’s not just my secret to tell. I promised someone I wouldn’t, and I… There are reasons I want to keep that promise.”

There’s something in his tone she doesn’t take lightly, something she can’t quite recognize but she hears the sincerity in it.

She also hears love, for her and… maybe something else. If she didn’t have so much trust in him, that might concern her; but it doesn’t. She wants nothing more for Oliver than all the love in the world.

“You promise it’s not another stupid idea—because I can list them off again, I’ve thought of a few more,” she says, and he shakes his head, intent on her.

“No, it’s nothing like that. I…” He swallows. “I don’t know what you’ll think, but I promise it doesn’t put me—or _you_ —in danger. I would never do that.”

“I’m not sure I believe you would never put yourself in danger again, but I believe you.” She gives a tremulous, hopeful smile. “Just don’t lie to me, okay? If you need some time to work it out with whoever else, that’s fine. But when you can… _talk_ to me. Promise?”

He nods, and now she doesn’t have to hold his hands against her; he’s holding tight and pulling her in. “I promise,” he murmurs, as he kisses her.

Maybe it’s still a secret, even if it’s named; she’s still not fully sure what to think. But she knows a part of Oliver is still out alone on that ocean, sitting in a life raft with his father’s body, facing the worst of the world all on his own and just trying to survive.

So she’ll climb on that life raft with him. And if it’s a bumpy ride, at least she can hold his hand. 


	40. Hold Me Closer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 4x09 Between-the-scenes Moment (and a bit of angst at the end)

He finds her in the locker room, tucked around a corner so she can hastily strip out of the red dress that is stained with sweat along the armpits, and reeks with a chemical smell that she is trying to ignore even as she trembles. When he first saw her in that dress, the zipper teasing high up her thigh and slinking around her back in a sinful promise, he imagined dropping to his knees and parting the material with his teeth.

Now the red fabric pools at her bare feet with the clink of the zipper against the concrete and he feels nothing but an aching tenderness, even with her standing there in her bra and panties and reaching for the clothes folded on the bench.

“Hey,” he says softly, and she jumps, clutching the pale purple blouse to her chest. “Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Hands held out, approaching her slowly, as she closes her eyes in relief behind her glasses and her tense body sags a little when his fingers graze her shoulders. With a little sigh, she lets him pull her into his arms, standing on her bare toes and pressing her face into his shoulder.

“We need to get ready and go,” she mutters into his shirt, the corners of her glasses pinching into his collarbone, and he would squeeze her tighter if it wouldn’t risk breaking them.

“We can take a minute.” He presses a kiss against her temple, breathes in the scent of hair spray in the golden curls pinned at the back of her head.

Her arms drop to curl around his waist, the fabric of her blouse still pinned between them, and they nestle against each other like they’re home in their bed. Oliver holds her in his arms as though he can keep her there forever, as though anyone trying to take her from him will have to rip her from his grasp—and he won’t let her go. Ever.

If he thinks about the way his heart pounded so loudly in his ears as he tore himself from the ghosts’ grip… if he thinks about the unforgiving cold of the glass against his forehead… if he thinks about the echoes of her shrieks falling silent behind the closing door…

If he thinks about any of that, he will never let her out of his arms. They will never leave this room, this fortress; they will never take on Darhk or HIVE or any criminal ever again; they will never be anything but frightened.

And if there’s one thing he loves about Felicity Smoak, it’s that fear has never stopped her. She leaps from rooftops and stays beneath crumbling concrete and plunges a needle into the neck of the man with a sword to her throat to save the world… They fell in love on the battlefield—it means he fell in love with a soldier. What she told him tonight, that marriage was fighting together, only made him love her more.

So he has to let them keep fighting, let  _her_ keep fighting, even when it chills his blood and itches across his skin. But she can handle it—and he can be brave enough to handle  _her_.

For now, though, he’ll hold her safe in his arms.

“Oh, come on, guys, really?” Thea says, loudly, rolling her eyes as Felicity jerks away from him and tries to cover more of herself with the blouse. “I mean, I get the impulse to affirm life and all that, but can’t you at least go into the bathroom like normal people?”

“No,  _no_ , it’s not—we weren’t—not that I don’t want to, which you don’t need to know and he already knows, I realize—but not right now, not  _here_ ,” Felicity is saying, hastening to duck around the lockers and reach for the dark skirt next to the light pink coat.

“Are they almost ready to go?” Digg shouts from the center of the lair, and Thea calls back, “They’re in here doing it, of course.” Oliver can hear Digg’s scowl from the locker room, and expels a breath rather than try to defend his or Felicity’s honor (and yeah… they’ve been caught enough times that any defense would sound pretty weak, even to his own ears).

But Felicity has shoved on her clothes, slipped on her coat, and is coming out her hair into her classic ponytail, glasses slightly askew in the haste. He just needs to throw on his suit jacket and coat, and then they’re off to this mysterious gathering they’re keeping from him.

[If the thought prompts a slight shiver in the back of his mind, of another secret lurking, he quickly shoves it away and takes her hand to lead him back to the present.]

Before they all leave the lair, though, he tugs her to a stop beside him. “Are you sure you’re okay? I don’t know what this thing is we’re going to, but if you need to go home, I mean… I almost lost you.”

Maybe the comforting squeeze of her hand is actually her squeezing his, because she smiles up at him and says, “I know—and later, lots of sweet, slow, comfort orgasms, I wasn’t kidding about that.” Her grin makes him want to fit in at least one of those right now. “But I’m okay—I’m  _here_. With you. We’re in this together, right?”

He nods, not quite able to find the right words, and follows her into the elevator.  _Together_ … He realizes, with another jolt of his heart (a far more pleasant one, this time), that he never wants to be apart. Ever.

Later, when he holds her in his arms again,  _not safe and bleeding and God is she still fucking breathing and his hands are trembling as he feels for her pulse_ … he realizes the ring on her finger and the “yes” echoing in his ears can’t keep them together when she’s slipping away while still in his grasp.

But he just holds her tight to his chest, rocks her back and forth in his arms, looks around to make sense of the cold and empty concrete world around him where it’s just the two of them. Together.

She’s still here, with him, right here.

And he will hold her forever.


	41. Bearing It All

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Future Fluff: Oliver notices Felicity's a bit shy about something...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There may be some medical/anatomy trickery here depending on what actually happens in 4x10 (and possible character facts I’m forgetting), but it’s all in the service of more fluff. Just a thought that occurred to me post 4x09. Hope you enjoy! :)

It’s not that she’d hidden it before now, exactly, although looking back…

She hadn’t worn the black dress with the cutouts along the sides much even before it happened, and he didn’t notice that she hadn’t worn it since. On their honeymoon, she wore a bathing suit top that covered down to her belly button, but it still showed off plenty of cleavage and he can’t say he thought anything of it (well, he thought about it a lot, but mostly how soon he could peel the sodden fabric from her skin). She always wore a tank top over her sports bra whenever he finally convinced her to run with him, but so did plenty of other women they saw on the jogging trails.

He’d thought, with how many times she’d scolded him to see his scars in another light, that she saw hers in the same.

Now, though, as her face pales and she bunches the fabric of her billowing shirt over her stomach, he realizes he’d been missing the signs all along.

“Maybe a few with the shirt pulled up,” Thea had said, pulling her camera away from her face in order to point towards the other side of the room, after a whirlwind of shots taken in front of the window. “You could sit on the couch and-”

“No, I think that’s plenty,” Felicity said quickly, and that’s when he saw it come over her.

The fear and uncertainty and self-consciousness. He recognizes the expression from his own face—the expression she’s smoothed away until it’s nothing but a memory to him.

But hers, now, is a mirror to his past.

Her hands clench beneath the curve of her belly, as she tries to force a smile. “Really, Thea, thank you, but I-”

“This is my nephew’s first photoshoot, Felicity,” Thea says. “I am getting every possible angle. Maybe we can even get one of him kicking.”

“He’s been pretty quiet today,” Felicity says, and even through her obvious discomfort, her tone softens as she runs a hand over her stomach. Their baby had just recently started kicking more, and it awed them both to reverent silence every time.

“Maybe he’ll show up for the camera.” Thea smirks. “If he’s like his dad, he’ll try to punch me.”

Oliver can’t help the grin that flits across his face every time someone calls him a dad—but Felicity just squirms in place, and he can see the crease between her eyebrows from here.  

“Another day, maybe, Thea,” Oliver says, and when Thea turns to him ready to argue, he gives her a look that he’s practicing for parenthood. She looks back to get Felicity’s support… and finally sees it.

“Oh… yeah, sure,” she says, and with another few moments of innocuous chatter and a promise to meet him later for training at the lair, she’s gone.

When they’re alone, Felicity moves silently to the kitchen to grab a glass of water, her belly brushing against the counter in front of the sink.

He follows her, and says softly, “It’s the scar, isn’t it?”

She looks up, caught between surprise at his perception and a sudden embarrassment. “It’s not that I don’t like scars—I mean, I love yours, obviously—not that I love  _why_  you have them, and not in a weird way, but just… you know, they’re you. And I love you.”

It’s a sappy line, and she grins as she says it because she knows that, but he gives her the kiss she wants anyway (as though he ever would have refused).

“I thought you wanted your own scars,” he says when he slowly pulls back, his hand deliberately brushing across the back of her shoulder where her other scar lies. He  _hates_  that her body is riddled with bullet holes, and he still hasn’t reached a place where he doesn’t take the blame for that, but he has come to accept that her choices are her own.

Including the choice that brought her to him, that brought him the child growing in her now. His other hand drifts down to slide around the side of her stomach, to feel the way her body is blooming around their baby.

“I know, I was being silly…” she says, ducking her head.

“This isn’t about the way it looks, is it? Because Felicity, you have to know you are perfect. _Especially_  like this.” His hand strokes across her belly, large enough to span across nearly half.

And his son kicks him in the center of his palm, startling them both into a laugh that nearly brings tears to their eyes. Except that when he rests his forehead against hers and looks right into her eyes, he sees that for her, it did. Her bottom lip quivers, and the tears are not entirely happy ones.

“What is it?” he murmurs, the hand on her shoulder coming around to cup her cheek.

“Hormones,” she says, pulling back with a shake of her head, but he cradles the back of her head in his hand and doesn’t let her retreat.

“Felicity…”

“I don’t like the reminder,” she says finally. Her head drops forward to look down at her belly between them, and he’s staring at the top of her head as she mutters the next words into his chest. “Not just of all the fear and pain that came with it, not just of how quickly it could all happen again… I’ve learned to live with that, as best I can. But I  _hate_  the reminder of how… helpless I was. Useless.”

“Hey,” he says in protest, tugging her chin up.

“Look, I know it’s ridiculous.” Her hand tugs at the sleeve of his t-shirt, resting on his bicep. “But your scars are all actions—some good, some bad, some unbelievably stupid.” She drags her fingertip across his chest, brushing the scar from Ra’s’ sword through the thin fabric. “Even my other scar is me saving someone; if someone asks, it’s a good story. But this one… I was just lying there…”

Oliver scowls. “My scars aren’t good stories, Felicity.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.” She sighs. “It’s just… they’re not… weak.”

He’s not even sure how to start dismantling the wrongness of that statement, so he says the first thing that pops into his head. “Even the shark bite?”

“At least you got that while diving on some sort of island mission, right?” She smiles, as her hand falls to the hip where the semi-circle of teeth marks resides. “I don’t blame the shark for wanting a bite of this.”

He can’t help leaning in to kiss her then, nipping at her bottom lip as she giggles, and he’s almost distracted by her hands gripping his waist and the warm softness of her in this moment. But he has a herculean task he must conquer first—convincing this brilliant woman that she’s wrong. It doesn’t happen often.

“This is not weakness,” he says, low and firm, as his fingertips graze across her side through her shirt. She takes in a breath. “This is survival. It’s healing. It’s you coming back to me, being  _strong_ enough to fight your way back. It’s… life.”

As he presses his fingers into the fabric of her blouse, he can just start to feel the patch of rough skin across her rib cage. Her skin has stretched with the way she’s grown, and so as he reaches the edge of the scar, he’s just along the side of her belly.

That’s when his son kicks his fingers, moving the scar with his tiny feet, and Oliver huffs a laugh that trembles with the weight of this moment. “I think that’s two against one, Felicity.”  

He meets her shimmering gaze, and this time, they’re happy tears.

The photo that hangs on the nursery wall, understated in black and white, shows her bare belly turned at an angle, the skin smooth as their interlinked hands cradle her stomach.

But it’s the photo that they took just for them, tucked away in their private album, that he finds himself looking at again and again. They sit side by side, turned towards each other, her shirt rolled up and his completely off. All of their scars stand out along their bared skin, mapping the stories of their strength across their bodies, the jagged mark against her side proudly on display.

They’re smiling down at her belly between them.

And all they see is life.


	42. Making Merry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity and Oliver attend a suburban neighborhood Christmas party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place in a canon-divergent universe where they never left the suburbs. I side-stepped the issue of the 4x01 proposal because that was too much for this silly little fic. The neighbors continue to be creepy because, ha, that’s the suburbs. ;) Just a fun, random little continuation of my suburban ‘verse for the Christmas spirit!
> 
> Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate!! :D

The Johnsons’ house, bathed in multicolored twinkle lights and tangled up in garlands, is a minefield.

And Felicity knows minefields.

Okay, so maybe comparing the awkward explosions of inappropriate contact beneath the mistletoe to _actual explosions_ is a little much. But do the clumps of green leaves and red berries and uncomfortable holiday traditions have to hang from _every doorway in the house_?

For the most part, people ignore them, ducking through doorways quickly in single file or acknowledging them with a little chuckle and a shake of their head. If one of the few boisterous sheriffs of holiday cheer catches them (growing somehow more vigilant as booze flows more freely), then a grimace of apology and a kiss on the cheek seems to suffice.

Felicity planned to stay by Oliver’s side the entire night, hand tucked beneath his elbow, unable to be caught standing beneath mistletoe unless it was with him (not that she needed the excuse to kiss him). It had the added benefit of keeping him as a buffer against the endless empty chatter; he seemed to get along with everyone a lot better than she did.

He seemed to handle everything about their life in the suburbs better than she did. But every time she thought about bringing it up, she saw him smile, or heard him laugh, or felt the raw _happiness_ radiating from him.

She would endure anything to give him that.

But enduring the Johnsons’ neighborhood Christmas party is a severe test to this commitment, and as they step through the front door, she clings tightly to his arm and vows not to let him go. It’s not that she hates Christmas; despite being Jewish and having to patiently withstand the barrage of Christmas culture every year, she can appreciate the sparkling decorations and iconic songs and platefuls of delicious cookies. Yeah, she more than appreciates the cookies.

It’s the neighbors that can be… difficult. Maybe not as difficult as trying to covertly hack into a federal database while running facial recognition on multiple security feeds at the same time as your colleagues are chasing the GPS you’re pinging on a cell phone in a moving car (all while trying to be quiet because your boyfriend is in the other room watching sports)—but still, difficult.

Because she can’t help but be a little suspicious at all this mistletoe, and the way several of the women snap to attention when they walk in. In those first moments, Felicity is overwhelmed with the scent of gingerbread and cinnamon, the bouncy tune of that Mariah Carey song beneath the hum of chatter, and the sight of the giant tree in the corner, overflowing with lights and ornaments that hang precariously from every single branch. She has to let go of Oliver’s arm as Harold takes their coats, and somewhere in the shuffle, Oliver disappears from her side.

Maybe Karen called over Oliver to get his advice on an appetizer in the kitchen for perfectly innocent reasons; maybe she really did linger in the doorway until he got there just to make small talk as he approached, and maybe she really did forget the mistletoe was there until she looked up with a resigned laugh. And maybe, when Felicity trailed after him, Karen was being perfectly polite when she told her she needed to borrow Oliver for just a minute and to go mingle.

Or maybe Karen is involved in a vast neighborhood conspiracy to grope Oliver under the guise of Christmas obligation.

“One too many late nights sticking my fingers in other people’s naughty business,” Felicity mutters to herself while hovering over the buffet table; now she’s seeing conspiracies everywhere. Standing behind her, Susan chokes on the cookie she was nibbling and goes to grab a cup of punch from the end of the table, waving Felicity away when she tries to hand her a glass.

When she has her own punch and plate of cookies in hand, Felicity wanders around looking for Oliver. She doesn’t get two feet before someone is snagging her into a conversation about holiday plans; she says for what feels like the hundredth time that they’re going to Star City to visit Oliver’s sister and their friends. She doesn’t add how much she’s looking forward to getting away for a few days, even if it means having to sit in on a few board meetings in person, because the bloodhounds of gossip will pounce on any hint of her unhappiness here.

And the last thing she wants is any hint of that getting back to the man who’s standing across the room, smiling politely at the short woman he’s leaning down to kiss on the cheek, who releases her grip on his arms with an embarrassed giggle as they part. Felicity can’t even find herself blaming Ellen for taking advantage of the moment—if she’d had an ounce of sense, she would have plastered mistletoe all over the lair years ago. Especially right over the salmon ladder. Yeah… maybe hanging from the center of the bar, that way when he…

“So, Felicity, did you get to see the new Star Wars?” Bill asks, disrupting the very inappropriate movie going on in her head with the topic of a much more timely and party-appropriate movie. “I saw the decorations on your lawn.”

The only thing she’d contributed to the decorating of their house (which consisted mostly of the strands of lights that she had watched Oliver put up, climbing a ladder that was sadly not salmon in nature) was the inflatable Darth Vader and Yoda in santa hats. She was still desperately searching for an R2-D2 with a menorah.

“I did!” She’s grateful for a topic that she’s actually happy to talk about. “We went to a midnight showing at the IMAX in Millbrook—it was amazing. So much fun.” She couldn’t quite get Oliver to dress up, but she did get a picture of him in his 3-D glasses.

“All the way to Millbrook? There’s an IMAX theater in Rosemont.”

“Oh, is there?” she says, looking away absentmindedly, trying to edge away discreetly. She doesn’t exactly want to explain how they were banned from the Rosemont Cineplex.

“Uh oh, look where we are,” Bill says jovially, pointing up. His cheeks are bright red, from a combination of eggnog and the stuffy warmth of the crowd, and before Felicity can do much more than glance up his face is closing in on hers. He plants a sloppy kiss on her cheek, a little too close to the corner of her lips for her liking, but it’s benevolent enough; he pulls away with a grin and doesn’t try to get handsy like Robert tried over by the dining room earlier.

Before she can do much more than offer an awkward smile in response, Karen is calling for Bill from across the room. The sharpness in her tone seems strange until Felicity remembers she is the youngest woman at this party—perhaps the mistletoe conspiracy is backfiring on them a bit. She’d feel more triumph if she and Oliver weren’t the ones suffering in this little game.

“Having fun?” asks a familiar voice from behind her, and she spins around on her heel to see Oliver standing there, one eyebrow quirked. While not exactly jealous, he does step closer to her, his hand cupping her elbow to tug her in against him. She curls her fingers into the fabric of his dark green sweater to keep him from leaving her again.

“Fun is not the word I would use,” she says hastily, but before she can add any more of her complaints, she sees the way his eyebrows draw down in a sudden frown. She knows, if she gives the tiniest hint, he will sweep her away from here to see her happy.

But it’s about time someone put _his_ happiness first.

So she shakes her head and smiles up at him. “I see you’re very popular here.” There’s even a couple smudges of lipstick in his stubble, and she brushes her thumb across his jaw to wipe them away. She trusts him completely, and knows better than to think a few kisses from drunken housewives would ever sway his affections for her—still, for some reason, she thinks of Ollie Queen and how much he must have loved mistletoe at parties. He was probably the type to wear a mistletoe belt buckle, maybe even able to pull it off, looking like this. That’s where she decides to stop thinking about it.

“There’s only one woman I’ve been trying to catch under the mistletoe,” he says, smiling as his hands slide down to her waist, just above the flare of her red skirt. They’re still framed in the doorway between rooms, just beneath the hanging mistletoe above; not that she’d care if he kissed her just about anywhere, for no other reason than the one she still sometimes can’t believe—he loves her.

He doesn’t have to lean down far to capture her bottom lip between his, with her spiky heels lifting her towards him, but she still revels in the strength of his hands hauling her up against his chest. They keep the kiss chaste, noses brushing gently against each other as they pull away, eyes closed for a lingering moment as she clings to his shoulders.

“Is there mistletoe hanging over a dark closet somewhere?” she asks with a sigh, hands sliding down the solid planes of his chest. “I could kiss more than your…”

That’s when she realizes the hum of chatter above the Christmas carols in the background had died away, as the neighbors nearby watch them with looks ranging from wistful to scandalized. One woman smacks her husband on the shoulder and mutters, “You never kiss me like that anymore.” He scowls and grumbles back, “When’s the last time you offered to kiss my-” before she smacks him again.

The party resumes with an awkward force of conversation, everyone turning back to safer topics, ignoring the young couple still holding each other in the foyer. In the months they’ve been in Ivy Town, the neighbors have mostly gotten used to them—the car washes in the driveway that ended with Oliver hauling a soaked and giggling Felicity over his shoulder back into the house; the walks hand in hand down the street as they stumble against each other and stop for kisses; the occasional shouting match that ends with Felicity storming out the front door only for Oliver to follow and press them against the porch railing, kissing the weak protests from her lips. Not to mention the details of their sex life that Felicity has blurted out at every neighborhood gathering.

So, really, a little kiss beneath the mistletoe is nothing to the neighbors.

Felicity’s ready to laugh it off and disperse back into the party, but Oliver’s still gripping her waist, and when she looks up at him, his eyes are heated.

“I think we have mistletoe back at the house,” he murmurs.

He looks more than happy at the idea of leaving, and she takes him up on it with a haste that might be awkward to the rest of the partygoers if it weren’t completely expected. And really, she should have expected it, too.

After all, it’s not the first minefield to end with him lying on top of her, wonderfully sweaty.

But this time, the explosion is far more pleasant.

 


	43. The Gift of BB-8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Based on a random headcanon: Oliver gives Felicity a BB-8 mini-robot, and she adds a camera and speaker to make her bedrest more fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a Tumblr post and thoughts of Oliver's Xmas gift to Felicity - then the image of Felicity controlling a little BB-8 was too much to resist. :) Happy (somewhat belated) Holidays!!

There are sounds that are missing, in the weeks that follow. The rolling of the computer chair wheels over the platform glass, the click of her heels up the stairs, the constant hum of her muttering over the clatter of the keys. It’s not silent, with her programs still running and her occasional calls over the speaker phone for strategy sessions–but it’s not _her_.

But there are new sounds that fill the void, sounds that are somehow completely Felicity, even with her lying in bed miles away. The rolling metal over the concrete, the buzz of the little head turning as it spins around the corridors, the beeping melodies and whistles as it makes its way through the lair. When he feels a pang run through him at the sight of her empty chair, Oliver can listen for that silly little robot… and know that she’s still here.

Even if she’s not _here._

Like now, when he’s stepping up the stairs to her station to check the program’s she’s running, and he hears the little pining trill of BB-8 as it runs into the side of the bottom stair. It’s her quick signal for him to carry it with him, and he can’t help the brief smile as he bends down to pick up the tiny orange ball, the warmed metal sphere fitting in his palm.

“Set me on the desk,” her voice, tinny and distant but still getting stronger every day, rings out from the speaker she somehow built into the thing without disrupting its shape. There’s also a camera, mounted into the eye, which whips around at her command and now watches him from his grasp.

“You’re supposed to be napping,” he says, unable to summon the proper stern tone when he’s speaking into a small robot in his hand. She replies with one of BB-8′s mechanical grumbles. At first, he felt stupid responding to the robot she’d modified, especially when she only used its pre-programmed sounds. But it helped more than he expected at the beginning, when talking tired her out. And it made her smile to see him talking to BB-8′s noises like he understood them. 

He would do anything to see her smile–especially when he still wakes from dreams of those agonizing hours, when he’d worried he would never see her smile again. 

The first thing she’d demanded, when she was conscious enough to be awake for hours and healed just enough to be mostly back to herself, was _Star Wars_. He should’ve known, given how she’d waited anxiously to buy tickets and already planned multiple viewings in the first weekend. Missing that had been just one of the things taken from her; Oliver made it his mission to give back everything and more. 

Arranging the screening had been simple for the Palmer Tech CEO, though he promised to take her to an IMAX when she could sit up. Her gasps and laughter, though strained and followed by winces of pain, were still some of the best music he’d ever heard.

He’d already bought the BB-8 toy as her Christmas gift, as soon as she’d cooed over the design and he’d heard her discussing plausible logistics with Curtis. Thea even found her some BB-8 hubcaps for the temporary wheelchair she would have to use around the office, once she was back at work. Felicity wears her nerd love proudly, and even when he doesn’t understand it, Oliver loves that intelligent passion in her eyes when she talks about it. 

He thought the BB-8 would be a fun little distraction for her weeks of bedrest, a little toy to drive around the bedroom floor. But it is Felicity, and so it takes less than a day for her to modify the battery life and motor, attaching the camera and speaker, with Curtis to fetch parts and talk schematics. When he first heard her voice behind him in the kitchen, he spun rapidly around to scold her for even thinking of being out of bed–only to look down at BB-8 twirling at his feet. She giggled until she gasped with pain, and he thought of telling her just to rest. 

But… she  _giggled_. 

So he takes the BB-8 with him downstairs when he has to leave her side, the awkward bulge beeping in his pocket, and drives to the lair with it sitting in the cup holder. If Alex notices the thing sitting on his desk in the campaign office, occasionally emitting approving whistles or disapproving groans, he must just think Oliver is a Star Wars fan. He certainly doesn’t notice the way Oliver sometimes shifts his opinions in response to the tiny robot’s sounds. 

And the others get used to having it around the lair. It whirls around the edges of the training mat, bumps against chair legs until someone lifts it onto the conference table, or disappears into the wiring of the servers with Felicity’s little voice saying, “Oh, the port is loose, I couldn’t see it before!” (And then ordering Oliver carefully around through the robot’s voice). 

Whenever he works out on the salmon ladder, there it is, so that Thea walks by and bursts out laughing at the tiny orange ball peeking around the corner nearby. “BB-8, you’re a perverted little robot,” she teases, and laughs again at the answering beeps of agreement. 

It is strange–though calling anything strange in a _superhero_ lair is a bit of a stretch–but it is _her._ He can call out for her (though she likes it when he calls for BB-8), and it will roll up to him, speak with her voice, remind him that she is alright. (Sometimes it’s in the docking station while she sleeps, and he has to resist waking it to call her, telling himself she is safe in the secured loft, with her mother to care for her.) In weeks of pain and nightmares and recovery, it is happiness and fun, when he wasn’t sure that was even possible. 

Now, he sets BB-8 on the desk and watches it roll around abandoned coffee mugs and keyboard wiring, peering at the screens as it goes. He knows she’s got access to the screens on her tablet, but seeing the array of monitors through the BB-8 camera makes her feel like she’s back in the lair. And her rapid muttering of computing terms and possible solutions as the screens reflect her scrolling is a sign that she will be okay… That _they_  will be okay. 

So he hastily catches it when it nearly rolls off the edge, saying “Careful,” under his breath before he can even remind himself it’s a _toy_ , feeling a rush of affection for the little thing’s gurgle of gratitude. 

Feeling a rush of affection for _her_ , as though it’s her he’s holding in his hands. Because, in a way, it is. 

Oliver Queen loves an IT girl.

He supposes it’s not such a stretch to love a robot, too.


	44. Random Bits of Fluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just what it says on the tin--a few little pieces of Ivy Town fluff to get us through the angst.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I have been so off my drabble game lately... sorry about that! Hopefully I'll get back into it soon. :) 
> 
> But for now, I hope you enjoy these random little bits of over-the-top, cavity-inducing fluff. I just needed a little break from the angst, and Olicity being normal and in love in the suburbs is one of my favorite things.

“No, no, wait, that one still has some left in it!”

Oliver just gives her a look, standing with one foot in the bathtub, the upside-down bottle of shampoo held in his hand. The edges of the tub and the plastic shelves hanging from the shower head are overflowing with rows of hair products and body washes, most crusted over in dried shampoo and soap.

Felicity snatches the bottle from his hand, feeling the weight of the liquid still inside, popping the cap to smell the fruity scent. “Oh yeah, this one made my hair really soft, remember?”

He’s in the middle of being frustrated with her, but she can almost see the effort he has to make not to reach up and snag one of her newly shortened curls to twist between his thumb and forefinger—it’s a new version of his twitch, when his arm is around her shoulders as they watch TV or she’s laying with her head on his shoulder as his fingers weave through her hair or they’re eating breakfast on the back porch and he reaches over to curl a loose strand around her ear.

But he refuses to be distracted. “Then why did you buy these other ones?” He gestures around the standing army of products.

“It was running low,” she says, as though this should be obvious. “And that one smoothed out the frizz better.”

“What about this one?” He grabs another from the shelf, knocking over two others in the process. As they clatter against the floor mat in the tub, he raises that one eyebrow at her, and she’s in real trouble here if him looking that unbearably smug turns her on this much.

“Made my hair too greasy.” She grimaces in memory.

“Then let’s get rid of it.”

“It’s almost full!” she protests. A childhood of coupon clipping and tight budgets makes the thought of throwing out a full bottle of shampoo abhorrent to her; she’s gotten used to spending a bit more freely, but she isn’t about to be _wasteful_.

“Felicity…”

She takes in his attempt to be stern, the little flicker of a dimple in one cheek, how ridiculously domestic he looks in sweatpants and a gray t-shirt as he stands in the bathtub they share… the way the callused hands that once ended lives are now grasping shampoo bottles like they’re the biggest challenge of his day. Because they are.

That doesn’t mean she’s going to let him win—so she uses her best tactic: _distraction_.

Of course, it backfires when in the process they knock over half the bottles and Oliver slips on one, just barely managing to keep her head from cracking against the tile wall, thanks to his well-honed reflexes. They lie awkwardly tangled up in the bottom of the tub, laughing as the water splatters across the shower curtain now torn from its rings around them, the bottles wedged uncomfortably beneath their bodies.

“Okay, you win,” she says with a giggle as another bottle finally topples from the shelf and smacks him on the shoulder. When she looks over through the wet mess of hair in her eyes, she sees him smiling back at her, eyes soft and adoring.

“I already did.”

XXXXX

Felicity’s stumbling down the street, almost toppling over in her wedge heels, as Oliver tries to corral her with an arm around her waist. The sky’s already dark, the street lamps on, the noise of lawn mowers and kids splashing in pools finally died down for the day. Everything is quiet…

_Except_ for his girlfriend’s voice shattering the silence, echoing through the night.

“ _Oh, I think that I found myself a cheerleader_ ,” she sings, off-tune and loudly, twisting out of his grasp in something halfway between a tumble and a sway. “ _She is always right there when I need her.”_

“Felicity,” he gasps out when her foot hits the curb in front of their house and she falls. He lunges forward, snagging one of her hands to yank her back upright towards him. With a loud laugh, she spins around to slam against his chest, grabbing onto the short sleeves of his polo as she tries to get her footing. He curls his arms around her, so that even if the tangle of her legs can’t hold her, he always will.

“Dance with me,” she says, head flopping back to grin up at him. Her breath smells of all the sugary pink cocktails she drank at the Millers’ barbecue. “Come _on,_ Oliverrrr.”

With the fabric of his collar twisted in both her fists, she starts shimmying back and forth in his grasp, humming something that might be a song in her head except she’s missing some of the notes. The wriggling of her hips against his own is tempting him into something far more fun than a dance—and far less appropriate for their front lawn.

“Come on, _please_ ,” she says, finally getting her balance enough to push away from him, moving with unsteady steps onto the grass. For a moment, he just stands there in the street, watching her floral skirt flutter around her thighs as she swings her hips back and forth in a rhythm all her own. Then she turns around, reaching out one hand and wiggling the fingers in a grabbing motion, bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “Dance with me?”

Unable to fight the grin spreading across his face, Oliver walks slowly towards her, taking her hand and letting her tug him in against her. He keeps a hold of her hand, his other arm snaking around the small of her back, and in the dim glow of their own porch lights, he sways back and forth in a few steps of a sloppy waltz. There’s no music to guide him, other than Felicity’s giggles and the new hum of contentment in his chest. Mostly, they’re just stumbling around in the dark, clinging to each other and calling it dancing.

“You’re a good dancer,” she mumbles, slightly slurred.

He leans in to kiss her deeply, tasting the sweetness on her tongue. Still smiling against her lips, he says, “I just needed the right partner.”

XXXXX

 “Right there?” she asks, and he can’t help the noise that escapes him as her fingertips dig deep into the muscles above his knee. “Is that—I mean, was that a good noise? I don’t exactly know what I’m doing here.”

“You don’t have to-” Oliver grunts, just before she hits the sensitive tissue beneath his kneecap, and his entire body twitches restlessly.

“Oliver?” Felicity yanks her hands away.

“No, no, it’s good,” he says on a long expelled breath. There’s a twinge of pain, but it’s better than the aching stiffness he’d been feeling for days. As she cautiously places her hands back against the bare skin of his knee, massaging the flesh there with her strong, dexterous fingers, he sighs and lays his head back against the throw pillow. He’s laid out on the couch in their living room, Felicity kneeling on the carpet next to it.

“This is what you’re signing on for,” he mutters, the words slipping out before he can stop them. He’s used his body _hard_ for years—first in raucous partying, then in rugged survival, and since then in long years of training and fighting and torture. This is only the beginning of it all catching up with him; he can feel the interest payments coming due in the creaking of his bones.

Then he realizes what he’s implying.

“I didn’t mean… That you… That we…” He clenches his jaw, hands twitching where they rest along the cushions of the couch. The future is a nebulous thing between them, around them—for him, something he can’t wait to hold firmly in his hands; for her, something still murky and evolving, or so he assumes as she mutters over contracts and squirms awkwardly under her mother’s excited phone calls.

“You sound like me,” she says softly, smiling, as she rubs one hand gently up and down his thigh, just beneath the hem of his boxer shorts. “I like taking care of you.” And then, quietly, “I always will.”

He lifts his hand onto his leg to grab hold of hers, wanting to ask if she’s sure, but not wanting to ruin this moment by squeezing too tight. So he says nothing, tangling their fingers together until she tugs hers away.

“Hey, I’m not done playing doctor with you,” she says, teasing, as she returns to the task of massaging his knee. He struggles a bit to focus on being her willing patient, as his aching body becomes more and more aware of her soft hands and their proximity to other areas of potential stiffness.

For a few more moments, though, he savors the relief in that pained, weary joint, the easing of that pain beneath her touch. It’s only going to get worse with age. But even in this, the future doesn’t scare him.

Because when he looks at his future, all he sees is her.


	45. Set Fire to the Rain [E]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Why are you wet?" (Silly Ivy Town smut - Explicit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came from a prompt on Tumblr, inspired by a lovely smutty drabble by darlinginmyway: http://darlinginmyway.tumblr.com/post/141674936432/prompt-why-are-you-wet-and-you-can-interpret 
> 
> Of course, I took it and made it ridiculous Ivy Town silliness - but kept the EXPLICITNESS. I hope you enjoy! :)
> 
> NSFW

At first, Felicity doesn’t notice that the familiar squeak of his sneakers against the tile floor is louder than normal, that it’s accompanied by a shower of droplets splattering across the ground. She just hears the patio door sliding closed behind him, and she spins away from where she’s digging through the refrigerator–-and freezes.

“Why are you wet?” she blurts out, gaping at him as he stands awkwardly in front of the glass door.

Oliver’s gray t-shirt clings to the lines of his chest with heavy, sopping wet fabric, only a few patches of lighter dry cotton spared along one sleeve. His hair is soaked, dripping water down his forehead and temples, a few drops falling from his eyebrows to slip down his cheeks. Clinging to his solid waist with an elastic band, his dark sweatpants are splotchy with moisture along one hip and leg, water puddling around his sneaker on the floor.

It’s not strange for him to come home sweaty… She likes it. A lot. But he was not gone long enough to have worked up this much perspiration. As she crosses the room towards him, she looks out at the clear blue sky and the warm summer sun–-no rainstorm caught him by surprise.

But something clearly did, she thinks, as his shoulders tense and his face twists into a sheepish grimace.

“Ellen was out washing her car,” he says. He’s breathing a little heavy, maybe slightly more than usual; after what he’s used to, morning jogs don’t get his heart rate going that much. She usually takes care of that herself, once he gets home. “She turned with the hose just as I was running by. An accident.”

“Oh, an accident, hm?” Felicity says, stepping closer to reach for the damp fabric over his chest. As it squelches beneath the palm she lays flat over his heart, she knows this was more than a sprinkling of water. The woman must have turned a firehose on him.

“She offered to let me towel off, but I wasn’t far from home.” His embarrassed expression, probably from being caught unawares by a clumsy housewife, softens into a gentle smile. He still loves being able to call this place, “home.”

“Isn’t Ellen nice?” she mutters under her breath, her hand sliding down the ridges of his abs. The muscles tense at her touch, through the chill of the wet t-shirt, with the warmth his body naturally generates thrumming beneath. He expels a huff of breath, head tipping forward as her fingertips slow just as they reach the waistband of his pants.

“Do you want to get a towel?” he says, ignoring her little scowl.

Felicity knows better than to care about some neighbor trying to get her jollies off by super-soaking her boyfriend; hell, she knows the kind of lust this man’s body can inspire.

However, she also knows that Oliver doesn’t like surprises–-especially water-related ones. The way he watched her anxiously from the beach when she swam in the ocean, or sat forward in the lounge chair while she floated in the hotel pool, or lay rigid and awake for hours as midnight thunderstorms rolled over their motel roof… If Felicity said anything now, he would assure her that it was nothing, because of course the Arrow can handle being splashed with a little water while jogging through the suburbs.

It’s not nothing, though; she can read the extra tension stiffening his frame, the quickness of his heartbeat still settling, the breaths slightly too heavy for the little exertion of a morning jog. Anyone else looking at him would see nothing wrong.

Her own heart still skips giddily every time she realizes she’s no longer “anyone else.”

That means it’s her job to care for this man, to protect his heart as fiercely as he protects her body. There’s a few other things he does quite skillfully to her body, she’s reminded, and she likes to think she’s not too shabby at returning the favor.

So her fingertips skate along the hem of his t-shirt, slipping beneath the dripping edge to ghost across the bare skin of his lower belly. His head is still tipped down towards her, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening as the tension between them thickens in anticipation rather than lingering discomfort. As a drop of water falls from the tip of his nose to spill onto her hand, all of his attention is now on her.

And no longer on the abyss of memories waiting at every moment to swallow him whole.

“I think we need to get you out of these wet clothes,” she murmurs huskily, and she feels his large frame drift towards her helplessly, drawn towards her like gravity. She’d said once, in the blissed-out cheesiness of a post-coital haze, that he was her entire world now (later, that statement would scare her; in that moment, it was simple fact, as she draped herself across his chest and felt his warm skin like solid ground beneath her cheek). He’d replied, with his fingertips dancing up her spine and tangling in her hair, that if he was the earth, then she was the sun–his light, the center of his universe.

Dramatic declarations sounded so much better when they were naked.  

In one swift motion, Felicity grabs the bottom of his t-shirt in both hands, and starts to lift it up the sides of his rib cage. Oliver accommodates her instantly, lifting his arms and ducking down to slip out of the sodden twist of fabric yanked over his head. She tosses the t-shirt into a soggy pile on the floor.

Oliver’s bare chest heaves with a deep breath, but it’s not from any lingering anxiety or exercise now. This is raw heat, his eyes fixed on her, pupils wide and dark as he licks the water from his lips. Unable to resist, Felicity reaches out to drag her fingers through the moisture still slicking his skin, tracing the paths droplets take as they slither along his scars. His muscles twitch beneath her touch, his skin hot even through the cool dampness left behind. He leaves his arms hanging at his sides, perhaps unwilling to get her jersey knit sundress wet with his rough hands.

So Felicity leans forward, intending to plaster herself against him, maybe catch the drops still sliding along his collarbone with her tongue–

Except her bare foot slips in the water scattered across the floor, and she hurls forward in an ungainly sprawl.

Oliver catches her easily, hands closing around her bare shoulders, as her own hands lash out to clutch at his arms. She uses the momentum to propel them both back, until his shoulders hit the door and he grunts at the cold glass against his skin. He holds her weight in his hands until she’s found her footing again on the slippery floor, her chest pressed against his stomach, and she can feel the front of her dress soaking through and her nipples hardening at the chill.

Okay, maybe her nipples were already hard. But when she pulls back a few inches to steady herself, that’s what she notices-–and it’s _definitely_ what he notices, his eyes dropping to the wet red fabric drawn tight across her chest.

“Okay, now we know, slippery when wet,” she says, flashing a smile, and some of the heady atmosphere lightens as he returns the grin. His grip has gentled around her shoulders, sliding down to cup her elbows and keep her close.

“I’m well aware,” he says in a soft, deep voice, smirking with a bit of smug flirtation as he leans in to kiss her.

What starts as a quick nip against her bottom lip, a brief sweep of his lips against hers, deepens quickly as she pushes up against him–using the glass door as leverage to flatten herself against every inch of him. The glass squeaks against his damp skin as his back rubs against the panes.

His hands slide along her jaw to cradle the back of her head, as she opens her mouth beneath his and they devour each other in long, slow drags of sensation. The slick heat of his tongue sliding against hers, the scrape of teeth, the scratch of stubble across her chin, the plump flesh of her lips folded and tugged against the soft firmness of his… Felicity loses herself in him, her hands twisting up to tug on the wet strands of his hair behind his ears, curling her painted nails into the back of his neck as she pulls him down into her. She doesn’t care about the way her dress is clinging uncomfortably to her skin, or the way drops of water fall from his eyebrows to dampen her cheeks.

Feeling the heat evaporate the wetness from their bodies, building inexorably between them until she feels like her skin might be steaming, Felicity reaches hastily between them to yank the elastic waistband of his pants past his hips and growing erection to fall at his ankles. Oliver slips his feet out of his sneakers with practiced ease, kicking away the pants to be caught in the legs of a kitchen chair. It leaves him in nothing but his snug black boxer briefs, and her standing there in a dress revealing more and more of her body as the skirt plasters against her thighs.

“Come here,” he growls, though she’s only inches away. She recognizes the intent heat in his eyes, the way he leans in towards her as his calloused hands reach down to slide roughly beneath her skirt, lifting her thighs easily in his grasp as her knees part around his waist, and she grabs his shoulders to hold on as he hauls her up into his arms.

She loves feeling the strength coursing through his arms, the veins standing out along his biceps, the muscles bunching between his shoulder blades as she runs her hands down his back. Her hands slide easily through the last of the moisture turning to a light sheen of sweat down his spine. As he presses eager kisses along the column of her throat, she can’t help grinning against his temple, her glasses askew and her hair hanging over her face. There are moments when it hits her, that this is her life now, that she can do this with him whenever she wants–-sometimes as easy and instantly as looking at him from across the room or letting her fingers tease lightly against any sliver of bare skin. She wonders if it will ever stop filling her with an unbelievable joy.

Then the hard ridge of his cock slides just right against the front of her panties where their hips are clasped together, stroking her clit through the thin fabric soaked with her own wetness, and her grin falls away in a gasping moan against his cheek. The smug little hum in the back of his throat only urges her to grind herself against him, and the next sound he makes is a strangled grunt of his own.

“Felicity,” he mutters, fingers digging into her thighs. “I need to be inside you. Now.”

They’re standing in the kitchen, still in front of the glass door (where their back door neighbor, Christina, may be getting an eyeful through the shrubbery dividing their yards; something to report back to Ellen, she thinks snidely), and the closest flat surface is the kitchen table. Which… okay, they’ve definitely been there, done that, but it’s not exactly sanitary–-or comfortable. Same with the granite counters that are always far too cold and sharp-edged and covered with poking, pinching, jabbing kitchen appliances.

Making it upstairs is… doubtful. And last time she got rug burn on the stairs–-worth it, but as she scans the room with Oliver breathing hot across her neck, her eyes fall on the much closer and much softer couch.

“The couch–the couch!” she says, shaking his shoulder and pointing to the overstuffed leather sofa. She digs her heels into the solid muscles of his ass, spurring him on. “Go!”

“I’m not a horse,” he says a bit gruffly as he turns to walk towards that part of the room.

“I’m about to ride you like one.”

Oliver pauses mid-step, arrested in motion, expelling a surprised breath as he pulls back to look at her. There’s nothing but that intense focus across his face, but Felicity hears what she just said and winces.

“I didn’t mean-–I don’t ride horses like… Not that I ever ride horses but it’s obviously different-” She stops when he catches her bottom lip between his teeth, before kissing the corner of her lips and then down her jaw.

“I love you,” he whispers as he pulls back, smiling. And she sees in his eyes that same sudden happiness, the realization that this is their _normal_ now, and he more than anyone thought he might never have that. He runs his nose gently against hers, just for a moment, the hot tension between them eased into something warm and loving.

Then he slowly sets her on her feet, and she realizes that he’d already carried them to the couch. With careful movements, he tugs the glasses from her face, reaching down to set them on the coffee table before falling back into the deep cushions of the couch. The way his knees fall casually open, highlighting the tented black boxer briefs where his erection bobs against his stomach as he settles into place, has her squeezing her thighs together where she still stands. He leans back, arms stretched out along the top of the couch, looking up at her in challenge.

Felicity squirms a little as she tries to decide what to do first-–what she should do at all. There are moments, occasionally, when she feels inexperienced compared to him. She tries to make up for it with confidence, with knowing how much he wants her, how he has chosen her (and how little he would value most of his previous “experience”), but there are times when she feels like maybe he’s waiting for her to do something she doesn’t even know is missing. Then she sees that endless desire and adoration in his eyes, feels his hands grab hungrily at every part of her, hears the sounds caught deep in his throat–-and she knows the only thing he’s waiting for is her. Just her.

So she yanks up her skirt to pull her panties down her legs, watching his greedy eyes follow the scrap of cotton past her knees, and then leans forward to grasp the waistline of his briefs. He helps her with this one, lifting his hips as she eases the elastic band around his considerable size, taking a deep breath as she frees him. The breath hitches as she grabs hold of him, just as she straddles his hips and lifts herself above him.

“Felicity,” he says, hands already sliding up her thighs beneath her dress, long fingers grazing across her clit and sliding through the wetness he finds there as he groans. “Are you ready? Are you sure?”

“Can’t you feel it?” she moans. “Now I’m the one who’s wet.”

She takes the raspy sound he makes as agreement–-and appreciation. As they close in on each other, she’s grateful for the birth control she’s taking, since stopping now would be an exercise in willpower she’s pretty sure she’d fail. (Lying in bed, where they did a lot of their talking early on, she’d drowsily invented the idea of underwear with a pocket for condoms built in; Oliver had huffed a laugh against her neck, reaching down to palm her ass in both hands and wondering how many they could fit in one pair.)

Now, their hands bump against each other as they’re caught between their hips, touching each other eagerly as they align themselves in place, pulling away only when the tip of his cock is notched against her entrance. She writhes against him, wriggling her hips down until he’s sliding into her, clinging to his shoulders for leverage as she takes him in. Oliver lets his head fall back, his hips thrusting up helplessly against her as they come together into one. The fabric of her skirt bunches up around her waist, hanging back across his knees as their bodies fall into the rhythm of the chase.

Felicity takes a few long, slow strokes, the muscles in her thighs surging as her knees dig into the folds of the couch on either side of him, Oliver’s hands fluttering around her waist and seizing hold of her skirt. Then he lifts one hand to slide the spaghetti strap from her shoulder, dragging it down her arm until her nipple pops free of the plunging neckline. He grazes his thumb around her, hand cupping her small breast, and Felicity tips her head back as she continues her steady motions above him. She closes her eyes as she pants, pushing herself into his hands as he peels her dress off the other breast, teasing her nipples in both hands.

“That’s it,” he grunts, as she lets out a moan she can’t bite back, her pace picking up a bit frantically as he sucks one nipple into his mouth.

“Oliver,” she gasps, their hips slapping together with a wet smacking sound that echoes in her ears. His hands skim around her waist to slip beneath the fabric, taking hold of her surging hips to pull her down harder into every thrust.

She’s losing the thin grasp of control she had on the situation, as her orgasm begins to build inside her, coiling within her nerves like embers of a fire getting hotter, hotter…

“Oh God, please, _just_ … ah! _Oliver_!” she cries out, as one of his hands slips down to tease his thumb in circles around clit.

“So… wet,” he says, and she can feel his cock jerk inside her as he twists the angle on his thrust, so that her own motions stutter, in thrall to him. “I’m not going to last much longer, I–- _fuck_ , you need to–”

“I–I–I’m coming, oh God, yes, _yes_!” Her mouth drops open as her body erupts in a shaking, quivering orgasm around him, grinding down against him as she chases the last sensations she can take in the onslaught.

She just barely feels his own body tense and stiffen beneath her, his own hoarse shout as he pulses inside her, joining her moments after as he comes with her name on his lips. They buck against each other in a few final, sloppy thrusts… and then still, falling together in heavy breathing and limp, sweaty pleasure.

As she slides back into her own skin, Felicity leans forward to press her forehead against his, both sweaty and slick as their noses rub together. Her dress is bunched up and wrinkled between them, hanging down around her elbows. Oliver’s body relaxes against the couch, sliding deeper into the cushions as he draws her in tightly against his chest. That boneless contentment throughout his entire body is everything she wants for him, and she feels like her job is done.

With her ears ringing and her heartbeat still pounding through her veins, Felicity nestles against his neck and sighs happily. But it’s only a few moments before the discomfort of the wet fabric wadded up around her waist and the clamminess of her skin against the leather becomes too much to ignore.

“Okay, _now_ I could use that towel.”

XXXXX

“Really, Oliver, I am so sorry about the hose, I don’t know what I was doing,” Ellen says, looking sincere and concerned as she clutches the glass of wine in one swinging hand, the other reaching out to land on Oliver’s arm. They’re standing in a circle at Patty’s barbecue, with Oliver and Felicity the focus of the neighbor wives… as usual.

“It’s fine,” Oliver says, smiling politely. Felicity sort of thinks he should stop doing that, because it only makes things worse. She clings to his elbow, hovering a little protectively and trying not to glare at the other women.

“You were just soaked!” Ellen adds, able to laugh now that Oliver seems unoffended by the incident. The circle perks up at the thought, and Felicity squeezes his arm a little tighter.

“I know,” she says, laughing as if she’s in on the joke. “And then he came home and got me all wet!”

A few of them blink, their smiles freezing.

Felicity attempts a wink, leaning in and whispering, “So, I should thank you.”

Then she tugs Oliver away towards the table with the drinks, not bothered at all by the smirk he’s trying to fight as the women all watch them go.

“Are you sure you meant-”

“Every word,” she says, reaching for the open bottle of red wine. “No one gets to squirt you but me.”

Oliver just shakes his head, as the woman picking up the punch ladle drops it back into the bowl with a clatter.

Felicity grimaces. “Okay, that time I heard it…“

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! :)


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